


Houses of the Holy

by AnnetheCatDetective



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, Bisexual Dean Winchester, Fix-It of Sorts, God Doesn't Play Dice With the Universe But He Does Do This, M/M, Matchmaker Sam Winchester, several alternate universes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:27:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 29,985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28310868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnnetheCatDetective/pseuds/AnnetheCatDetective
Summary: Cas is in the Empty, Dean's given up, Sam's FED up, Chuck agrees to an interesting proposition, and new universes are born.
Relationships: Castiel & Sam Winchester, Castiel/Dean Winchester, Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester
Comments: 119
Kudos: 46





	1. How Many More Times

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Izzybutt](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Izzybutt/gifts).



> You ever watch a couple episodes of the very end of a fifteen year old TV show because you can't resist the words 'gay angel', and then despite MASSIVE disappointment, get so invested that you have to go back to the start and watch everything leading up to that?  
> You ever get the urge to, say, throw out two entire finales and just write something else because dammit they deserve better?  
> You ever sit down to write a gift fic and realize you have like... ten different AU ideas, ranging from 'mild canon divergence' to 'historical AU'?
> 
> For Izzy, the result of all these things being true. Merry Christmas!

Things are subdued, to say the least. For all that Dean had put on a brave face in front of the kid, he’s _destroyed_ now. The way he was the last time they lost Cas-- worse. 

“What’s the point? I mean, what are we saving?”

“You’re not thinking straight.” Sam hauls his brother up off the floor, getting an arm around him. “It’s the _world_ , we have to save it.”

“For who? You think if we ask real nice, he’s just gonna put everything back? We’re too late. And I don’t want…”

“You don’t want what?” He asks, and doesn’t let Dean squirm out from under the question, as he drops him into the chair. It’s not exactly the most comfortable place, but Sam’s not exactly comfortable with the idea of hauling him all the way to his bed, not if he plans on being a dead weight the whole walk.

“Look, you just-- you can’t get it, okay?”

“Not okay. You want to tell me you don’t want to get back all the people Chuck vaporized? You want to tell me you don’t want to save the world?”

“I don’t want to live in it.” Dean’s voice is cold, hard. Bitter. The look in his eyes communicates about as clearly as he would ever try to say in words, that he wasn’t going to put this knowledge on Sam’s shoulders if he hadn’t pushed for it, that he was a cornered animal lashing out when he’d have rather holed up in the dark, and sharing this truth was a last-ditch effort to stop having a conversation.

Of course, now that it’s out, there’s no way they aren’t having a conversation.

“Dean…”

“It doesn’t matter, do you get that? It doesn’t matter to me anymore, I’m done. I’m done. I-- Cas…”

“What happened?” Sam steps in again, his hand going to his brother’s shoulder. “When you two were facing Billie… what happened?”

It had to have been bad, but Dean’s been more tight-lipped than usual about it, which is fucking saying something… He watches the way his brother’s face crumples under the weight of his grief, the fury doused. His head bows beneath it, and when he looks up, it’s with the kind of wet eyes Sam knows to ignore if he doesn’t want him to get defensive. Dean’s always taken Cas dying hard. The last time, he was as broken as Sam’s ever seen him-- hell, even the first time, when Cas was a strange entity they could barely know or trust, Dean was broken up leaving him behind, his voice a little choked when they came back to find him gone. Even then, he’d lit up like it was his own personal miracle when Cas came back. Cas is the only person other than Sam himself to get Dean’s forgiveness after every misstep, maybe he should expect that Cas’ death would hit him so hard. But this… it’s hard to see. Hard to have Dean honest about this kind of hopelessness, but he needs to know what happened.

“He’s gone. What else matters?”

“It matters to me. He was my friend, too, and whatever happened… I wanna know.”

“Did you know Cas made a deal, with the Empty?”

“... No. What-- what deal?”

“It, uh… He did it for Jack, and he, um… I mean it-- it doesn’t matter, it’s not-- He did it for Jack, and it came due. That’s all.”

“Billie didn’t kill Cas?”

“No. The Empty took ‘em both. He… he summoned it, because he knew it would… He knew that if it came for him, it would take her, and I… I’d be left behind. He left me.”

“He saved you.” Sam corrects him, gentle. “Don’t repay that by giving up.”

“You know what, fuck you very much, don’t give me that-- don’t-- Can you just for once accept that you don’t know, and you’re not gonna know, and you can’t understand this? And there’s no chick flick moment on the face of this _goddamned_ earth that’s gonna clear things up for you, either, because this is-- it’s too big for that, okay? Cas is gone, and he-- and I-- it’s just a mess, and it’s too big. Got it?”

“Sure. Sure. Just do me one favor? Stay alive and save the world, for me?”

“For you?” He looks up, exhaustion visible. He shrugs like he’s feeling the weight of that world pressing him down. “Yeah. Sure. You wanna save the world, let’s save the world.”

“I need my brother.”

Dean beckons him in closer, before leaning heavily into his side, hand coming up to pat halfheartedly at Sam’s back. 

“Okay.” He sighs. “Okay. One last ride. I’m just… I’m tired. That’s all.”

“I know. Come on, let’s get you to bed, we’ll… we’ll regroup in the morning.”

Dean gives a sound, a hollow, half-voiced laugh that’s just a hair’s breadth off from being a sob. “Sure. That’s what I need.”

“It’s not gonna hurt.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

Still, Dean lets Sam pull him to his feet and walk him to his room, doesn’t complain when Sam puts a glass of water and an aspirin on his nightstand. Gives him a look when he lingers in the doorway a moment too long looking worried, but doesn’t snap at him, really.

“You wanna take my belts and my razor or what?” He asks, but there’s no real heat under it.

“No. No, you said you were sticking with me. I just… you know?”

“Yeah. I know. Get some sleep, Sammy.”

“Yeah. Hey--”

“No, I know, just-- In the morning, huh?”

“Sure.” He nods, closing the door softly behind him and leaving Dean to get some rest. 

He hopes he will… but he might be the only one who does, tonight.

Sam finds Jack in the kitchen, morosely not-eating his cereal.

“Hey… you holding up?”

“I don’t know. Yeah. I feel weird.”

“That’s okay. I think we all do.”

“No… not just-- I feel sad, about everything, but I also feel _weird_.” He flexes a hand, stares down at it, and then at his cereal. 

“Okay. Well… maybe what you need to do is just… feel weird, for now.” Sam nods, helpless. He gets having weird feelings you can’t put words to, he’s dealt with plenty of weird, but that doesn’t mean he has the answers Jack needs now. Cas might, but… “It’s gonna be okay-- we’re not going to give up until it is, I mean. I… I wanna try and fix something, and I don’t know if I can. It means I’m gonna go out for a little bit, okay?”

Jack bites his lip, hesitating, but eventually his shoulders loosen a little and he nods. “Okay.”

“I want you to stay here with Dean. He’s getting some sleep, and… and he needs it, but…”

“Okay.”

“Okay. Good.” He breathes out a sigh, and tugs Jack into a quick hug. “Good. Hey… I’m really proud of you, okay? Handling the end of the world is kind of… more than you should have to deal with at your age. Or I guess ever, right? Most families plan on dealing with the end of the world never. Sorry you got saddled with this one.”

“That’s okay.” And Jack smiles, which makes everything a little easier. “I think it’s a good one.”

“I’m glad. I’ve gotta… I’ve gotta go. I’ll try and make it quick. But you’re gonna be okay, Dean’s still here. You’ve got your cereal. You’re good.”

A part of him wants to promise to be back soon, a part of him knows he can’t promise he’ll be back at all, and that it would be a hell of a promise to have to break if things go bad. But at this point, what are the odds? It messes up the whole story to poof him now, doesn’t it?

-/-

“You wanna make a bet with me.” Chuck folds his arms, skepticism writ large across his face. 

“Yeah.” Sam nods. It wasn’t exactly a question, but he answers anyway. 

“Your brother know about this?”

“Nope.”

His eyebrows lift, but Sam’s not surprised he doesn’t complain about not having to deal with Dean.

“All right… so tell me what you’ve got, that’s of any interest to me. Because I mean, I’m your god. This isn’t like laying down a c-note when you’re hustling pool, Sam, this is the biggest league there is. And I am notoriously difficult to amuse. And notoriously difficult to beat. So I’d really love to hear what you think you can do better than your god.”

“If you win, I betray Dean. He doesn’t know I’m here. I mean, that’s what you want, right? You want the big betrayal?”

“I dunno… I did. But I’m kind of into what we got going now. You know, you guys, miserable. Alone. Suffering. You had your chance to play ball, Sam. You’ve had the chance to play ball for… what is it, over a decade now?”

“Alone and miserable. Suffering. Sure.” He nods. “That’s gonna get old fast. So… a bet. If you win, I turn on Dean. I play ball. You think he’s broken now? He’s still got one thing to lose. And you’ve got the chance to win it.”

“Yeah, and what do you want if you win? You really think I’m gonna… what, let you hustle your free will in a game of pool?” He laughs.

“You give us Cas back.”

Chuck shakes his head. “I didn’t take Castiel.”

“Are you omnipotent or impotent, man? I thought you were god, I thought you were _the biggest league there is_.”

“It’s the Empty, I don’t control that shit. Outside my jurisdiction, Sammy. No can do.”

“It just seems that as _God_ , there’d be something you could arrange, or something you could offer. I mean if you really thought it didn’t matter and that you had nothing to worry about, making a bet with me.”

“I’ll do it.” He levels Sam with a look. “Not because of your really unsubtle attempts to bait me into it, but because I think it’s kind of interesting that _you’re_ the Winchester who came to ask me to give you your pet angel back. And I figure there’s something I could offer… Where _is_ Dean, anyway? Drinking the pain away? Shedding a single manfully repressed tear? Doing the broken widower routine in a dark hole somewhere?”

“Dean’s not a part of this deal, so it doesn’t matter.”

“Doesn’t matter, unless I win. Then he becomes a part of this deal. But okay. I’ll bite.”

He snaps his fingers and they’re in his… office, or viewing room, or… well, whatever he wants to call it. Sleek and eerie, with a wall of screens. Sam’s on one of them, but it’s the Sam of twenty-six or twenty-seven, playing pool in some bar. Another screen lights up, the chess game from The Seventh Seal. Another, Bill and Ted challenging Death to a game of Twister. A couple other screens light up with scenes Sam doesn’t recognize, one lights up with a scene he does-- himself, again, poker this time, and unlike the pool game, that was life-or-death stakes.

“So what’s the game?” Chuck asks him. “What do you think you can do better than _god_?”

“I don’t think I can beat you. I think Cas can. I think… I think the idea that there’s only one world where Cas chooses us is bullshit. We’re his family. No matter how much you mess him around, controlling every aspect of your big ‘story’, that’s what’s supposed to be real. So if there are other versions of the world where Cas isn’t with us, it’s only because you took him out of the story completely.”

“... I don’t really get what you’re getting at here. I mean, yeah, I’ve killed him off plenty of times, I’ve killed all of you off plenty of times. Usually in less than satisfying rough drafts. But it’s not because I’m afraid he can _beat_ me, it’s because he’s not an important part of the story I want to tell. So even if I didn’t think bringing him back would screw everything up for me even more than it already is, why would I want to, when he’s the fucking fly in my ointment? When someone else took him out for me?”

“Those are the terms.”

“The terms of what?”

“Ten worlds.”

“What?” Chuck interrupts, before he can finish outlining the thing.

“Ten worlds. You set up the dominoes, tweak things any direction you want to, any kind of change you like. You know, maybe everything happens twenty years in the past or into the future, maybe we grow up in a normal home, maybe we grow up with less-- not sure how you’d pull that off, but you know, go ahead and try. Whatever version of reality you want to craft… craft it. But I get one chance to knock one of those dominoes out of alignment. I get one chance to change things. One day to make a difference. Whether you drop me in on Dean’s first day back from Hell or when it’s five minutes to midnight, any way you want it, I get one day to change our fate, and from that point on? You’re hands off. And then we tally up the wins and losses. If Cas chooses us, I get the point. If he doesn’t, you do. But you don’t get to kill him off because he’s inconvenient to your plans.”

“Well that is just delightfully stupid.” Chuck nods. “Yeah. Sure. I’ll even give you the highlights reel on the big changes your other selves oughtta be aware of so you know what you’re getting into. But when I set the dominoes up, one way or another they’re going to fall. There’s nothing you can do.”

“Nothing either of us can do. That’s the point.”

“You’re really staking your brother’s life on whether or not one of my angels makes the same mistake often enough?”

When Chuck puts it that way, it sounds insane. On the other hand, it also sounds like what he’s been doing, whether or not he’s been aware of it, since Cas pulled Dean out of Hell. Every major turning point that’s led to their having anything they could call their own has been because Cas has chosen them, that’s something they’ve essentially got god’s own assurance on, so why wouldn’t he stake everything he has left on Cas coming through for them again?

And there’s one more thing Sam knows, whether or not Chuck has grokked onto it yet-- if they don’t get Cas back one way or another, he’s going to lose Dean, too. He can lose him slow and ugly, or he can play out Chuck’s game and try and make things painless, but this is not his first rodeo with Dean grieving Cas so hard he loses himself, and he knows where it’s going. He knows either Team Free Will crosses the finish line together, or they don’t cross it at all, because every time they’ve ever tried to make it with someone missing, it all just takes a nosedive. 

“Yeah.” He nods. “I am.”

“You know even if you get him back, you don’t _win_. You’re still stuck here, in my world, playing the game I give you. And I can bring him back… that doesn’t mean I won’t take him away again.”

“Well… that’s something the four of us will just have to deal with when we get there.”

“Confidence. I like it.” Chuck laughs, and the screens all come together to form one single picture. He’s watching Dean claw his way to the surface, where they buried him… watching him suck in lungfuls of air and rise up on shaky legs. “And I do have something, I have something I think we could work with. Little version of reality I scrapped a long while back, but… yeah. Yeah, we could have fun with this one. Let’s just…”

He hits the fast-forward on things, and everything zips by, only stopping to play out a couple of key scenes-- it’s more a refresher course than anything, Sam’s first meeting with Cas isn’t so different, nor does anything else seem to be, not that he’s been able to make out. He doesn’t think Chuck means to show him what Cas is doing with Dean behind his back, in this universe, but even getting just a flash of it, he knows… he knows all too well what he’s looking at.

He’s still not exactly ‘ready’ when Chuck slaps him on the back and reality goes all wobbly around him.


	2. Sick Again

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam falls into something unexpected, with a colder and more foreboding version of Cas than the one he's grown close to and a Dean that he's not sure what he can do with-- but who he might have one very unexpected thing in common with...

After what he’d seen on Chuck’s highlight reel, the second Sam is slammed into his body to start his twenty-four hours, he heads back to the motel room. 

He’d expected Cas to look guilty, at least. He’d expected Dean to get defensive. 

Instead, Dean’s strung out, and Cas just looks at him impassively, a reminder that this isn’t _their_ Cas, the Cas who’s fought by their sides for years now, this is a Cas who barely knows Sam at all, and hasn’t actually known Dean for much longer.

“Hey, Sammy.” Dean chuckles softly, head lolling. Cas shushes him, a moment of gentleness that almost reminds Sam of their own Cas, except for how quickly it vanishes, leaving him cold and hard and angelically imposing even as he heals over the nick on his own throat and tucks Dean into bed.

“What the hell?” Sam demands.

“You presume to judge your brother for what he needs to survive? What motivates _you_ , Sam Winchester? A lust for power? Or lust, plain and simple? You drink the blood of a _demon_. How can you look at him and say this is worse?”

He bites back the urge to say he doesn’t do that anymore-- this version of him does, he hasn’t yet hit rock bottom here. 

“Is it better?”

“My grace sustains him.” Cas looks down at Dean, hand going to his brow. “Pulling a soul from the pit, restoring every part of him… it takes _work_. It is a job not so easily done. When I wove your brother back together, it was my grace which bound him back into himself, but he is not yet ready… he cannot yet be without me.”

“Okay, cool, great-- I mean, weird, and-- weird, but… So you’re sticking around, or like… staying within calling distance? Coming along for the ride?”

“I come to him when he is in need of me, for now.” His head cocks to one side. “When he has fully recovered, he will no longer need me. Until then… calling distance is the width and breadth of the universe.”

“Right, but what if he still needs you?” Sam jumps on that. “You’ll come if he calls you, any time he needs you?”

Okay, that was… unsubtle. Then again, this is Cas, subtle might not really be the best tactic. He really has no idea what the best tactic is, because he’s in a universe where Cas did something… not-right or not-enough when he brought Dean back and now Dean’s a…

Angel blood junkie?

Okay, probably better than demon blood, with time and distance from the man he was-- or is, in this world-- he’s man enough to admit that, but still… creepy. It makes this Cas feel so unlike their Cas-- or maybe that’s just what he was like, way back when, and Sam’s forgotten some of his weird hard edges. But their Cas brought Dean back without a hitch-- at least, without one significant enough to require feeding him _blood_.

“I don’t know.” This Cas frowns, head tilting again as he regards Dean. 

“What do you normally do? When I’m out, when you-- when you’re hiding this? How do you keep him… okay?”

“Okay?”

“Not strung out! Not-- not like this!”

“It helps if he sleeps, before you come back. I assume when he doesn’t, you mistake him for drunk… He doesn’t dream of Hell, when I’ve come unto him. He sleeps deeply, he wakes rested. Do you notice that?”

“I-- I don’t know. Sometimes.” He shrugs, uncomfortable with the accusation lurking in those words. Maybe in this universe he doesn’t. Maybe he doesn’t want to.

“You play into Hell’s machinations, you allow yourself to be led into depravity, you let a demon bring you comfort… tell me, Sam, in all this, what does it mean to you, to be the center of a Righteous man’s world?”

“Uh, come again?”

“What does it mean to you, that a soul as rare and beautiful as this should have chosen damnation for you, that having suffered forty excruciating years in Hell, he would make the same choice again tomorrow?”

“More than I usually know what to do with. Dean raised me, that’s not something I just forget about. Living with him isn’t easy… that doesn’t mean I don’t care about the sacrifices he’s made for me.” He answers, with none of the defensive anger he’d have held back then. “The real question is, what does he mean to you?”

“I was instructed to save him. I am still doing so. The process is… complicated.” Cas’ frown deepens.

“Yeah, but what does he _mean_ to you? What do you _feel_ about all this? I mean, Cas… you’re giving him, like, a part of yourself. Doesn’t that mean something? Like, when this is all over, don’t you think that you’re going to want to be a part of his life?”

“That is… not how this works.” 

“Why not? You aren’t allowed to make friends with people you pull out of Hell?”

“No. I am not.”

Dean stirs, and Cas places a hand to his forehead-- doesn’t seem to do anything to make him sleep, as far as Sam can tell, it’s his palm against Dean’s forehead and he simply holds it there as Dean re-settles. It takes too long for it to be a thing Cas _makes_ happen.

“There… it’s all right. Sam will understand, it’s fine.” His voice goes gentle again, his hand slides from Dean’s brow to his cheek, then to his shoulder. “You’ve done nothing to feel ashamed of, so rest. Shh, rest…”

“Why don’t you just knock him out, if you’re not friends?”

“It’s hardly necessary. He’ll sleep, after. He always does.”

“I’m just saying, it sounds like you’re maybe his friend a little.”

“I wouldn’t call us ‘friends’.”

“No, sure, just… like, a guy who sits up by his bedside looking after him because he needs to drink your blood to not die and you’re super defensive of that, but I shouldn’t look into this too deep because you’re not supposed to be friends. Got it. I’m just saying--”  
  


“Yes, you do a lot of ‘just saying’.” Cas grumbles. That, at least, reminds him of their own Cas-- grouchy and just a little bit petty when annoyed by Winchester Bullshit.

“ _I’m just saying_ , I know my brother. He’s a pain in the ass. If you didn’t like him anyway, you wouldn’t sit up by his bedside.”

“Angels don’t befriend their charges. My duty is not to watch over Dean from birth to death, like some human conception of a ‘guardian angel’, my duty, after securing his rebirth, is to ensure his safety so that he might fulfill his destiny and prevent the end of all things. To prepare him for a coming war. It does no good to be his ‘friend’.”

“Hoo boy, we have… a lot to unpack there.” Sam collapses onto his own bed with a sigh. “How much can you tell me about this coming war?”

“I shouldn’t tell _you_ anything. I fear you are too far from salvation and you will fall to the corrupting influence of your demon friend. Although, your soul is not so black as I expected. And of course Dean sees much goodness in you even now.”

“So… if demon blood is corrupting me, what? Does your blood… purify Dean, for this coming destiny crap?”

Cas hasn’t looked away from Dean for more than a moment the whole time they’ve been talking, but he’s somehow looking even _more_ at Dean than he already was, his expression unreadable-- enough so that Sam realizes how much of how well he can ever read their own Cas is through Cas’ changing, and not how well he’s figured out his weirdly deep, weirdly blank looks. 

“No. It allows him to complete his healing… but no part of me could make him purer than he is. At his most broken, he was a _beacon_ in the Pit. He is truly Righteous. To sustain him elevates _me_.”

“But you’re not friends.” Sam rolls his eyes.

“No. We cannot be.”

“Okay cool.” He lets out a whistle and rolls onto his side, punches his pillow into shape. “So what’s it do for him? Drinking from you, I mean. Does he get powers, is it like…?”

“It is _not_ like what you do with your demon friend.” Cas scowls impressively. “It heals him of damage. It repairs the parts of him that are weak, but there are no special powers.”

“Cas?” He pushes himself up on one elbow. “Stay?”

“Stay?” He frowns. 

“Yeah. Stick around. Stay. Make sure nothing, I don’t know, happens to him while I’m asleep, or… I don’t know. But I think he’d rather wake up to you here than not, you know?”

“No, I did not know.”

“Well… he would. Not a lot of people are _there_ for Dean, like, consistently.”

“Yes, I am aware that there is no one in your brother’s life who has never abandoned him or let him down at some point.”

“Wow.” He mutters under his breath-- if the words had allowed for any ambiguity, and they hadn’t, the look Cas shoots him makes it clear enough he’s including Sam in that. “What I’m saying is, it would mean a lot to him if you didn’t just run out.”

“I see.” Cas nods. “Then I will remain until he wakes.”

“Thanks.”

Sam settles down to sleep, with that assurance in place. He should be asleep in his own universe, after all, and it’s not like he can spend ten consecutive days and nights without sleeping.

In the morning, Cas is gone, but Dean’s awake, sitting up in bed with gas station coffee and a monstrosity of a breakfast created out of a box of donuts and a microwave breakfast sandwich that looks unappealing even by their life-on-the-road standards.

“Where’s Cas?”

“Dunno, what am I, the guy’s babysitter? He’s an angel.” Dean says, like it’s insane Sam should even wonder. Maybe here it is. He and Cas don’t seem to be on the friendliest terms… “When I woke up he told me he would go ‘obtain breakfast’, because I ‘deserve to have my mortal needs considered’. Dude was so salty you could use him to ward off-- well, actually, you probably could, he’s an angel… Anyway, he was pissy about something, but not about getting breakfast, that was just… weird. Good weird.”

“Does Cas understand what food is?”

“Don’t be a bitch. It’s good. You want one? Either he brought enough for both of us or he does _not_ understand serving size.”

Cas didn’t just bring back enough for both of them, he brought back enough food to feed at least four people-- with donuts left over, even if you scraped the insides of the sandwiches between two donuts a pop. Sam’s not sure what the fresh-faced twenty-two year old version of himself he’s supposed to be would have said, he knows he used to eat garbage often enough when he didn’t have a more appealing option, but with a brain that’s pushing forty, he can’t look at that thing without feeling the ghost of heartburn yet to come looming over his shoulder.

“No. I really don’t. Jerk.” He rolls his eyes. “Guy brings you back to life with brand new arteries and you immediately wanna put a lifetime of cholesterol back in your body…”

“He knows what’s good.”

“He doesn’t know what’s _good_ , he knows what _you like_.”

“Oh.” Dean gives his hideous abomination of a breakfast a thoughtful smile. 

“I mean, he’s still a good friend to have. Just maybe… explain basic nutritional needs to him. I know you’ve never willingly eaten a vegetable that wasn’t deep fried or on a burger--”

“Or both.” He practically moans.

“Yeah, but-- Whatever, just… Look, should we maybe talk about what was going on when I came in last night?”

“Nothing to talk about.”

Well… Sam can’t call that surprising.

“Cas explained everything, so I guess we don’t have to. I don’t know if you thought I’d be upset, or… disgusted, or-- what, but I’m not. I mean it freaked me out a little, I didn’t expect that, just… he told me what the deal is, and I guess I’m… I’m glad he’s making sure you, uh, heal up.”

“What part of ‘nothing to talk about’ sounded to you like I wanted to talk?” Dean glares at him and shoves about half an additional donut into his mouth.

Sam holds his hands up in surrender and takes one of the donuts, though he doesn’t attempt to do anything with the dubious sausage, egg, and plasticky cheese of the breakfast sandwiches. 

Most of the day is normal. Research and a hunt, and there’s not a whole lot Sam can do beyond trying to be supportive. 

Cas shows up and _obliterates_ the witch they’d been hunting before she can stab Dean. It’s _brutal_ , the fight had been rougher than Sam was going in expecting it to be, he can’t deny Cas was a big help, he just…

He just guesses he’s used to their Cas, who’s been known to deal out a smiting, but who’s so often just fighting alongside them. The deafening wingbeats and the crackling of lightning is bigger, showier, than their Cas normally is. The way the witch is slammed to the ground before he even touches her, the way he’s on her so fast after that that Sam can’t track how he got from point A to point B, the horrible half-melt, half-combust she does at his touch and the way he slowly rises from his crouch over her, eyes glowing… He feels so much less human than the Cas Sam’s gotten to know.

Dean’s heart is still beating a mile a minute as Sam picks him up off the ground, and this must be out of ordinary for this Cas, too, the slack-jawed way Dean look at him. Suddenly Cas is standing before them, coat still flapping around him from the speed at which he’d moved, but his hands are slow and careful as they come up to cradle Dean’s face. His eyes are still glowing, though. They don’t go back to normal until he drops his hands from Dean with a satisfied grunt, all Dean’s blooming bruises vanished. 

“What the fuck was that?” Dean croaks, stumbling out of Sam’s hold and into Cas’.

“She wanted your blood for a ritual.” Cas allows Dean to sag against him, brings one arm up to steady him. An invisible force nudges Sam back half a step. “I could not allow it. But I see you’re all right…”

“You wanna come along for a victory drink?” Sam offers.

“I do not need to consume anything, drink included.” He looks to him, uncertain, only to stiffen when Dean noses at his neck.

“I do. Come on. Booze it up with us, we’ll pick up some company-- you ever been laid?”

“You don’t need me.” He chides. “And no. _No_.”

Dean mumbles something else against him, something Sam doesn’t hear. The last thing he sees, before he finds himself yanked back out of the reality he’s been in, is the softening line of Cas’ shoulders and the softening lines of his expression, as he agrees to come out to the bar.


	3. The Wanton Song

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam gets another day, in another world that doesn't seem so different from his own. 
> 
> And a Cas he's pretty sure he can trust to stick by them, with or without his encouragement-- no matter how difficult this Dean can be.

There wasn’t much of a highlight reel this time, either-- Chuck had just said that the life he would drop him into wasn’t so different from the one he’d remembered. Dean would be fresh back from Hell and the two of them would be on the road again, and that’s that. The highlight reel mostly catches him up on the case they’re currently on. It’s definitely not the same as the world he’d just left-- a couple of petty arguments in the car, Dean back from Hell, back behind the wheel, and immediately lecturing Sam about staying on the straight and narrow, no sign of Cas and no sign that Dean’s ever consumed any kind of blood... It’s early morning when he jolts upright in a motel bed, to see Dean slinking in.

“Hey… where were you?” He rubs at his neck, stretching a little and rolling out of bed.

“Making some quick cash.” He flashes a couple of twenties. Not a great haul for a night of hustling pool, but given the hour, Sam assumes Dean had gotten his four hours and then gone back out to some all-night place, too restless to stay in bed. Taken what he could find at a time when there were no high rollers to clean out.

“Great. We can get breakfast before we get a move on this haunting. Got a lead on those missing remains, but it’s gonna be a hell of a job.”

“Yeah? How so”

“We’re going to have to drag a lake, for starters.”

Dean groans. 

“You could call Cas.” Sam suggests. “This might be the time to ask for a little miracle. Unless you know something I don’t about dragging lakes. And even then, I don’t think we want to sit around with hair dryers trying to get the bones dried out enough to burn.”

“We don’t need Cas.” Dean snaps, bills crumpling in his fist. 

“ _Do_ you know something I don’t about dragging lakes?”

“Fine, I don’t _want_ to call Cas.”

Sam spreads his arms, giving Dean a look he knows his brother would categorize as some variety of bitchface. 

“I can’t-- After I just-- The guy’s an angel, okay?”

“Yeah, hence the asking for a miracle.”

“So he-- So it’s a bad time.”

Dean shoves the money back in his jacket pocket, before shedding it, heading for the bathroom and slamming the door behind him. Sam hears the shower start up, and he tries calling for Cas himself, but he’s surprised when Cas actually shows.

“Oh. Hey.” He blinks. “Um, glad you’re here. Dean’s got something up his ass about asking you for help, but we could use it.”

“He… has something… right now?” Cas’ brow furrows.

“Oh-- no, I mean, he doesn’t want to ask you for help because he’s being an idiot and I don’t know why, not-- It’s not literal.”

Cas nods, expression evening back out, though a slight frown remains. “He is ashamed to speak with me.”

“He is?”

“Often. He is uncomfortable with what I have seen, and he wishes I did not know him so well. I don’t understand this, but I know it to be the case.”

“Well, he’s an unreasonable dumbass sometimes. But like I was saying, we could use your help. I think the remains we need to burn are at the bottom of a lake, and as you can imagine, it’s pretty hard to burn something that’s… at the bottom of a lake.”

“It would be, yes. You would like me to obtain the corpse for you?”

“Yeah. And-- I don’t know, dry it out a little, maybe?”

“This can be done.” His attention turns to the bathroom door-- no, not quite the door. The wall near the door, where the shower would be. “I made the mistake of asking a personal question, the last time we spoke. He informed me it was a personal question, I did not know.”

“It’s okay. Dean’s… tricky like that. Sometimes things are just touchy, but he doesn’t hold a grudge against a friend for long.”

“Oh.” He only looks at Sam briefly, before his attention turns back to the wall. “He considers us friends?”

“I mean, aren’t you?”

“I don’t know. I have not had ‘friends’ before.”

“Yeah, I guess the other angels are kind of dicks.”

“They are my brothers. But it is not the same. Not the same as the relationship you share with your brother.” He shrugs-- at least, that’s the best description Sam has for it, it’s barely a movement, an almost birdlike tic of the head, but it has the energy of a shrug somehow.

“Well… let me show you what I’ve got so far on this case.” He motions Cas over, opens up his laptop and pulls up the research that his other self had been compiling, the stuff that Chuck’s highlight reel had given him. 

They’re going over the likely last resting place of one Frederick Graham, asshole ghost, when the bathroom door opens and Dean steps out in a towel. Cas actually looks up to the door before it opens.

“What the hell?” Dean scowls-- not at Cas, who’s staring the way he used to before a solid decade of gentle reminders about personal space and what humans consider polite versus what humans consider creepy, but at Sam. “I said this was a bad time.”

“Should I return after you have pants?” Cas asks, though he doesn’t stop staring. At Dean’s face, at least, but still, Sam gets how it’s still disconcerting to be stared at when you’re in a towel. 

“No, Cas, you shouldn’t-- Yeah. Fine. Do whatever you want.” Dean groans, turning and letting his head thunk softly against the doorframe. “If you want to talk about how I spent my night, don’t.”

“Why would I do that?”

“I don’t know, because sometimes you do, sometimes you want to talk about shit and it’s none of your business. You think because you pulled me out of Hell once, you have the right to save me now, like I’m worth that, but I never asked you to save me.”

“Dean…” Cas moves towards him, his steps faltering, his hand stopping short of finding the mark on Dean’s shoulder. “Sam asked for my help, I agreed to give it. That’s all.”

“Oh? You don’t want to lecture me? Not gonna give me those sad eyes and tell me I’m better than I think?”

“No. You are better than you think, but I did not come here to lecture you.”

“Just go. Just go… do whatever you did come here for, we’ve got nothing we need to say to each other right now.”

Cas frowns deeply and vanishes.

“Okay, what the hell was _that_ about?” Sam asks, turning to give Dean some privacy to dress in. He can hear him moving around the room, grabbing clothes. Pointedly not answering. “Well?”

“What do you think? Friggin’... angel of the Lord shows up, probably has some kind of spidey sense for sin, so… you know, you do the math, Sam!”

“Cas kind of gives you a free pass on a lot of sin.” He snorts. “You’re his Righteous Man, pretty sure he doesn’t care if you were out boozing and hustling.”

“Well I care. He shouldn’t-- He pulled me out of Hell for something better than this, but this is what I am. So.”

“I dunno, he pulled you out so you could save the world, anything else… you know, what’s it matter?”

Dean doesn’t say anything. 

They meet Cas out by the lake, after breakfast, where he’s got their skeleton dried out and waiting. Aside from the lake aspect, it’s an easy salt and burn. Cas spends the whole time standing too close, staring too much, the way he used to, but there’s a tension around it in this universe that Sam doesn’t recall from their own. A low conversation that they have, outside of Sam’s hearing, that ends with Dean getting angry, and Cas looking after him like a kicked puppy. 

It puts a damper over the rest of their afternoon, and Cas isn’t with them, but Sam feels pretty confident-- this Cas is a lot like the one he remembers. This Cas is going to stick with them, it’s just whether or not Dean will let him. 

“You find us another job, I’ll make some cash.” Dean says, with a heavy sigh, pulling the Impala into a dusty parking lot. The Tap Room to one side, Sam pictures a honky-tonk bar with a rickety pool table. Gas station to the other side, they can fill up and take off after a little rest.

“I’ll help.” Sam shakes his head. If there’s a job waiting, it’ll still be there. 

“The hell you will, you’ll find us a damn job.” 

Well. That’s… Sam’s not sure. Harsh, under the circumstances, but not out of line for a stressed-out Dean. He gets out of the car, slamming the door behind him, and he clearly doesn’t expect Sam to get out as well.

“I mean it, you don’t need to do this, just… get back in the car, do your research thing.”

“Don’t need to-- For god’s sake, Dean, I don’t know what weird hang-up you have with Cas right now, but don’t take it out on me when I’m just trying to help. It’s just hustling.” He rolls his eyes, ignoring Dean’s incoherently apoplectic response. “I mean, do you really expect me to just… sit in the car every time we need money while you do all the work? I’m not a kid anymore, I can pull my own weight.”

“No, you can’t, you-- you get back in that car, you--”

“You never know, I might be better at it than you are.”

“Car! Now! End of discussion!” Dean says, looking at him like he’d stated an intention to let Lucifer possess him instead of suggesting he’s the better pool player. Which he is, at least in his own universe, but Dean’s a little touchy about that there, too. Still, the need to eat tends to win out over his pride. 

Sam sighs and returns to the car, to start looking for their next job, and Dean stalks off towards the gas station instead of the bar, his posture just screaming anger.

“He’s upset.” Cas remarks, suddenly sitting in the seat beside him.

“Yeah.”

“My fault, I fear I offended him. He… he believes that I see him… badly. That I hold him to a higher standard, and that I feel pity for him. I failed to explain. I see all of your brother’s best qualities, but if I was to pick a flaw in him, it would be his stubbornness. He does not listen.”

“Yeah, he definitely hates listening. He still thinks I’m a child.”

“He never had a childhood.” He nods. “He wishes to preserve yours. He is unreasonably committed to allowing you some innocence in a hard world, but he does you no favors now. I understand, though.”

“What did you say to piss him off? For me it was suggesting I’m an adult. Also I could kick his ass at pool.”

Cas lets out an amused huff. “He misunderstood me. I wanted… I wanted his help with something. I wished to-- I wanted to arrange something fair, in exchange for the favor I-- Well. We didn’t get very far into that conversation.”

“Yeah, he likes to hear the first thing you say and assume he knows everything.” Sam relaxes a little. “But I mean… I know he’s doing his best. He doesn’t want me to lead the same kind of life he had to, but now we’re in this together, and he doesn’t want me to leave, either… it’s fine, it just… Cas?”

“Yes?”

“If it takes him a long time to open up and get his shit together, like… if it takes him ten years to work some things out? You’ll hang on the line for him, right?”

“I do not consider a mortal lifespan to be a very long time. And I do not mind waiting.” He nods, giving Sam a smile. “I believe in time we may have a smoother understanding of each other… and if we do not, it is still worth it to me to have tried, for him.”

“Thanks. He needs that. I mean, everyone does.”

“Mm. It seems to be a common human need-- to be known or to be trusted. For another person to put effort into your care and well-being. It is something he’s lacked. I will do my best, then.”

“You and me both.” Sam turns to offer Cas a handshake, to say something more, but he’s gone again. Outside, he sees the shadow of a figure in a long overcoat blink into existence in the flickering light beside a semi truck, and then it disappears. “Yeah, good talk.”


	4. For Your Life

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam runs into an unexpected snag with a human Cas.

The highlight reel is different, for once. 

Cas isn’t an angel, for one.

Well, he’s not not an angel, or… he wasn’t always a human. But somewhere after pulling Dean out of the Pit, he got his wings knocked off. Apparently Sam doesn’t know the hows and whys, because those don’t show up in the reel. He just knows Cas is traveling with them, sleeping in the back of the Impala, confused and grumpy. It could be the same as the first time he got his powers knocked out of him, for all Sam knows, if a bunch of other things went differently here. He knows Cas is traveling with them because they saved him from a pissed-off demon and kind of engaged in what you could call a soft kidnapping in terms of bundling him into the car and then crossing state lines with him without asking him for permission. But he wasn’t super conscious for that part, and crossing state lines without paying attention is kind of part of the life, and it’s not like the place they started from was any kind of home for him. 

“So what’s the plan?” He asks Dean, keeping his voice low. 

“What do you mean what’s the plan?”

“I don’t know. Take him to Bobby, or… hell, who else do you take an ex-angel to? What do we even do for the guy?”

Even if Chuck’s plan for this world is to strip Cas of his powers and leave him that way, it’s not a guaranteed win for him, but Sam’s a little worried. This could take the choice out of his hands.

“He’s with us, Sam. There isn’t anyone you take an ex-angel to, he-- He’s with us.” Dean shakes his head. “It’s not much, but it’s the best I got. We’re not turning him loose, look at him.”

“I’m not saying we dump him in a cardboard box by the side of the road--” 

“He’s just a… he’s just a little _guy_ now.” Dean glances in the rearview mirror at the snoring lump that is Cas. 

“He’s not that little. I mean, he’s normal-sized. He’s a normal-sized man.” Sam stares at him. “I wouldn’t call him little. Besides, he’s a soldier who’s been around longer than the galaxy we live in. I know he’s not equipped for the modern world and he’s not used to having… needs, but he’s not a lost kitten, Dean.”

“For now, he’s with us. I mean, when he’s… when he’s used to Earth, we can give him options, we can try and set him up somewhere if he wants a normal life, but… he’s just not ready for that. It’s not safe.”

“If that’s even what he’d want. I mean-- why would he?”

“Why not? He gets that choice. But only when it’s-- only when it’s safe. Can’t… leave him alone like this, look at him. You know why he passed out? ‘Cause he’s not used to needing to eat, or sleep.”

Dean hits up a drive through burger joint before pulling in at a motel, where he sends Sam to secure beds for the night.

A thing Sam does on autopilot, because he’s not used to traveling with a human Cas.

“Shit.” He gets the door open, looks at the two beds. 

“No, no, it’s fine. We should be keeping him close.” Dean shoulders past him, half-carrying Cas. “Get the luggage. We’ll get a rollaway cot sent over.”

He dumps Cas on the bed furthest from the door, waving a bag of food under his nose and laughing when that pulls him out of half-sleep. When Sam gets back in with their stuff, Cas is wolfing down his meal and Dean is on hold with the front desk, taking agitated bites of burger and pacing the small space between the beds. 

“How are you feeling?” Sam asks Cas, sitting across from him and finding his own dinner.

“Mm-- better.” Cas nods, pausing only briefly and saying only that much, before finishing the rest of his food. “Much better. I forgot this feeling… or, it became unreal to me, after my experience with Famine. It is a relief to feel satisfied-- and on so little.”

“Well, for a human being, that’s a good amount of food.”

“Is it? This is good to know.” He licks salt and ketchup from his fingers, momentarily devoted to the task. 

Dean groans as the recorded voice on the other end of the line reminds him to hold. 

“What are they so busy with this time of night?” Sam rolls his eyes.

“Shit-- finally. Yeah, hi-- Uh-huh, can I get a rollaway, room six? Yeah, that’s fine. Okay, cool. Yeah, thanks.” Dean hangs up at last. “They’ll send over a cot and some extra bedding.”

“Of course, I’m sure it will be more than sufficient--”

“Oh no, that’s your bed.” He interrupts Cas. “You’re gonna sleep, like… really sleep. You’re a person, you gotta… This is just something you gotta figure out, and you’re not even used to crappy motel beds, so... I’ll take the cot.”

“Oh.” Cas looks down. 

“Tomorrow, we’ll, you know… we’ll figure this stuff out. Get you a little more settled.” He goes over to where Sam had dropped his bag, pulls out a plastic Wallgreens bag from the main pocket, and tosses it to Cas, before retrieving his toiletry kit. “Come on, if we’re gonna be living in close quarters and ordering extra onions, you’re gonna learn how to brusha brusha brusha.”

Dean shepherds Cas into the bathroom, the door ajar. Sam can hear soft, indistinct conversation, and the running sink-- and he can hear the point at which Dean’s instructions are delivered around a toothbrush. The cot arrives mid-lesson, so he accepts it, tipping the kid who’d made the delivery and leaving both cot and bedding for Dean to set up. 

There’s a startled laugh, from the bathroom, Dean swears and then his voice drops back down to the calm and even instructional tone, he answers Cas’ question-- Sam can’t make the question out, but he can tell that it is one. 

Dean emerges without Cas, and after a moment, the shower starts up. 

“Dental care’s handled?”

“Yeah. Plus I gave him the same deodorant talk I gave you when you were twelve. Explained that soap was not optional when you’re living out of a car with a couple of other dudes, whether or not you get gungy on a hunt, basics… Basics.” He shrugs. “Anything I didn’t cover… we’ll figure it out when it comes up.”

“Cool, that’s definitely going to make this easier.”

“He pulled me out of Hell.”

“I know.” Sam blinks.

“Just… Earlier, you seemed like you didn’t get why-- He pulled me out of Hell. And now he’s been kicked out of Heaven. So I owe him. And I’m going to… to…”

“Teach him how to brush his teeth, I get it.”

“Okay. Good.”

They don’t say anything more. Honestly, the whole universe feels like a gimme. Dean sets his cot up by the door, Cas emerges with damp hair and crawls into his bed, and… maybe it’s not normal, but it’s nothing Sam can’t roll with, based on other times Cas has been depowered.

Dean doesn’t sleep long. Cas, predictably, sleeps in. Dean sets Sam the task of guarding him while doing research in their room, while he heads out to question witnesses. 

When Cas does emerge from his nest of blankets and general aura of grumpiness, coming up on noon, he blinks and scans the room before finally settling his squint on Sam.

“Where is Dean?”

“He’s out looking for a lead on these vamps. Anything you need?”

“No, no. I’m just… I’m useless to you both. I could prove a liability. Perhaps I should… go.”

“Go? Where?”

“I don’t know. It doesn’t matter.” He shrugs heavily. “Anywhere. Away. Heaven cast me out, Sam. I’m not… I’m not good for anything.”

“... Did you plan on sneaking out while Dean wasn’t here?”

The immediate look of guilt that makes itself at home on Cas’ face is almost childlike, broad and obvious.

“Don’t, okay?”

“I will be a disappointment. He will realize… I’m not what I was. I’ve failed him.”

“You haven’t failed anyone.”

“There are things you are not privy to, Sam, but I am aware. I know myself to be a disappointment. I appreciate that you want me to feel… better, but there is not much point. A request was made of me once, and I have failed to fulfill it.”

“It’s okay to fall short sometimes. The important thing is… Well, I don’t know what the important thing is. I mean it kind of depends. Being human is weird like that.”

So he was supposed to think he had it made, Sam figures, watching the way misery hunches Cas’ shoulders and lines his face, the way he sits on the edge of his bed, arms resting on his thighs, hands dangling loosely. He was supposed to think it was a gimme, only for Cas to slink out and leave, because Chuck’s set-up has him feeling useless, thinking he’s a burden on them. That does feel pretty on the money for Chuck. Wouldn’t be fun if he couldn’t twist the knife.

“I was never meant to _be_ human.”

“It’s not that bad, is it?”

Cas doesn’t answer. 

He sneaks out when Sam’s in the bathroom. 

Sam’s not sure how to explain this little lapse to Dean, is ready for a ‘what the hell’ or a ‘how could you let him do that’, but instead, he just sees Dean deflate.

“Oh.” He says. 

“That’s all? Oh?”

“I mean if he feels so strongly about it, what am I supposed to do? What do you want me to say, huh? Am I supposed to cry about it?”

“Last night you were all ‘Cas pulled me out of Hell, I owe this to him’, but now he runs away and it’s ‘oh’?”

“I gave him a place, Sam! He walked out! That was his choice, I didn’t-- I didn’t abandon him in the street, he walked out!”

“He walked out because he thought he failed us, he thought we wouldn’t want him without his powers, why do you think that is?”

For a long moment, Dean just glares at him, and then he pushes past Sam and slams the bathroom door. Based on the lack of any sounds of running water, or anything else, he’d done it entirely to have a door to slam between them. 

This one had seemed so easy at first, they had Cas in their motel room, nowhere to go but with them. Sam punches a wall too thin and cheap to take it and Dean emerges from the bathroom only to slam the door a second time. The weather, sympathetic to their struggles, implodes on them, a storm raging by midday, and Sam and Dean have another knock-down drag-out fight or three over the course of the afternoon.

“Maybe if you’d told him you wanted him to stay instead of talking about how you owed it to him to take care of him, he wouldn’t have thought he was a burden.” Sam snaps, curtains twitching in his grip as he looks out at the dark skies and the pouring rain.

Hail, now.

“How are you making this my fault? I brought him in, I bought him a toothbrush, I gave him the damn bed and slept on the cot, why is it my fault when he could’ve seen that all that friggin’ meant something? I mean, why did I think it would be different? This is what he does, he leaves.”

“No--”

“Yes. It is. It’s what he always does, it doesn’t matter if we need him, it doesn’t matter if we even-- if there’s no one else who could-- You know, he… he’s a rolling stone, and-- So why should this time be different?”

“This time is different because he didn’t leave to go do angel stuff, he left so that he wouldn’t be a burden on us, and he’s got nowhere else to go, so get your head out of your ass and find him!”

“Didn’t go so well?” Chuck asks, the room reeling around Sam, the screens cued for the next highlight reel.


	5. Black Country Woman

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chuck throws Sam a curveball...

“This one’s a little different…” Chuck looks at him like he’s holding back a laugh. “You know what? No highlights.”

“What? You can’t send me in blind--”

“All you need to know, is you’re on the trail of a vamp nest. And you’re taking a little downtime before you hit it.”

The screens go dark, along with any glimpses of information he could have gleaned from them-- a map and a newspaper spread out next to his laptop (in this universe he has a sticker for some band next to the track pad), the Impala parked outside a chain restaurant somewhere, a statuesque young woman standing in the middle of a police station, the clear youth in her button nose and big brown doe eyes contrasted by a navy power suit and a no-nonsense single strand of pearls. A coroner trying to make sense of the mess of a vamp victim’s body. He loses it all before he gets any of it.

“There’s no way that’s all I need to know. The highlight reel was part of our deal.”

“Mm, the way I remember it, the highlight reel was a bonus that I offered, not part of the terms of our deal. You’ll know what you need to know when you get there.”

“Hang on--” Sam starts, but then Chuck is slapping him on the back and he’s spinning through nothingness only to come to in that chain restaurant somewhere, sitting across from a woman-- not the woman he’d seen on one of the screens. If he jolts in his seat or looks off, she doesn’t react, she just reaches over and takes a french fry off of his plate, dipping it into her milkshake before returning to her own plate of nachos.

“Anyway, I need to get _laid_.” She groans. “If I don’t get it soon, I’m not going to be held responsible.”

She’s, objectively speaking, very attractive. Full pink lips, kind of a natural beauty… short, honey-blonde hair, a spray of freckles that add to that sort of spunky-cute vibe, and… very perky, physically. 

Something about the idea of having sex with her still sends a knee-jerk visceral disgust rippling through him.

“Uh, I should--” He starts, then stops. 

That’s not his voice.

He looks down at his hands. 

Or... not his hands.

“Holy shit.” Sam groans.

“What, now I’m not allowed to be horny? Suck it up.” She makes a face at him, and the face is one hundred percent Dean. 

“I hope you think this is funny.” Sam buries his head in his hands, can just feel Chuck laughing at him, no wonder he hadn’t gotten a highlight reel. 

“Hilarious. I’m serious, Sammy, this dry spell is killing me. The things that are starting to look good to me… If I don’t get some soon I’m not going to have standards left.”

“I wasn’t aware you had standards _now_.” Sam fires back, although… does this Dean have standards? Or, Deanna? That has to be it, right? She probably does-- though, as someone who learned to fight about the same time she learned to read and is never more than arm’s reach from at least three knives and a gun, she can afford to take some risks. If this woman is still Dean, Sam’s pretty sure she could kick any guy’s ass if he didn’t behave himself. 

Which he doesn’t want to think about in this universe any more than he wants to think about Dean’s conquests in his own. And that’s if she even goes for guys in this universe, maybe she’s still into girls.

Damn Chuck and his wanting to pull a surprise, because Sam’s got no idea what this version of _himself_ is supposed to be like, for that matter. With the initial ‘gotcha’ having passed, he doesn’t mind that he’s spending a day as a woman, but he’d like to not fuck up this alternate Sam’s life and he doesn’t know what her deal is, whether either of them is supposed to be straight or if they still like girls or what…

There’s a girl at the bar who’s his Dean’s actual type, who he could point out, unless this Dean is strictly into dick. That’s the stuff he’s got to know going in. She’s definitely giving Dean-- or Deanna-- the eye, which makes it a fair opportunity to play wingwoman, but...

Fuck it, what’s the worst that could happen?

“Gorgeous brunette, five o’clock. Keeps looking your way.”

She sits up a little straighter. “Yeah? Checking me out?”

“Definitely checking you out.” Sam glances over at the mystery brunette. This Dean’s gotta still like women, right? The woman at the bar must think so, because she keeps shooting some pretty _intense_ stares her way, but then, Sam doesn’t _know_. 

The thing is, Dean’s a hunter in this world same as in their own. Wears the same basic uniform-- well, he doesn’t know if the jeans and boots are the same-the same, but the jacket thrown over the back of the booth looks like their dad’s jacket, she’s got a flannel shirt on over a faded band tee, and her hair might be short because it won’t get grabbed or get in her eyes in a fight, without the trouble of putting it up, but the overall look is very butch. Sam gives himself-- herself, he guesses, or… Sam gives themself a discreet look, only to get distracted by suddenly having cleavage. Okay, table that for later, he’ll assess the cleavage in private. It’s his cleavage, he’s allowed to do that.

“Describe my mystery date.” Dean says-- Deanna, should get used to calling her Deanna because he probably doesn’t call his sister ‘Dean’.

“Brunette.” Sam shrugs, daring another look, accepting that it’s less obvious than having Deanna turn around in her seat. He doesn’t know what she’s into but he knows the information his own Dean would want to know. “Stacked?”

“Mama likes ‘em with a little muscle.” She nods.

“Gross.”

“What? Look, you of all people should appreciate that Winchester women are a lot to handle, and if I can’t find someone who’s equipped to handle me, then what’s the point? I can’t get my back blown out if I accidentally break the guy in half.”

Guy? Oops.

“I’m going to get up and go over to the bar. Real casual.” Deanna informs him, sliding out of her seat. “What kind of clothes am I looking for?”

Weirdly suburban soccer mom, to be openly eye-fucking another woman from the restaurant bar, but Sam doesn’t say that.

“Like… chinos and a sweater set? Blue scarf.”

The look she gives him is familiar, Sam just doesn’t know what he did to earn it.

“You’re a whole bag of dicks, that’s not funny. Just for that, I’m not getting you a beer.”

Sam shrugs expansively as she heads off to the bar, stopping to talk to the brunette in the sweater set on the way. A brunette in a sweater set who immediately approaches Sam. Slides into the seat across from him, in fact, mindful of the jacket draped over the back.

“Your sister informs me you described me as ‘stacked’?” She cocks her head to one side.

“Holy shit, Cas?”

“... You are _not_ Sam.”

This is the first time someone’s mentioned it, although he guesses there’s nothing subtle about totally failing to recognize someone you know. 

“I am Sam.”

“But not the Sam that I know. The Sam that I know is a woman.”

He glances down at his cleavage again, and then back up to soccer mom Cas. “So… you don’t see what she sees, when you look at me, huh?”

“Mm. You are remarkably similar. You are still you, just… different enough. I might not have noticed it.”

“Yeah, you usually don’t. Uh, I probably… can’t talk about this whole thing. Pretty sure at least one of us gets zapped with lightning if I talk about what I’m doing here.”

“Understood.”

“You should probably pretend I’m the, uh, your regular Sam.”

“Understood.” Cas repeats, nodding. “Deanna would like you to know you are not as funny as you think you are, but I imagine you were not attempting to be funny.”

“No, I thought you were a stranger checking her out.”

“I have a different vessel in your world.” It's not exactly a question.

“I’m not actually sure. I mean, yes, but if this is me here, then this might be… you know, the same vessel, but…”

“Stacked?” She raises an eyebrow.

“I’m used to you looking different, let’s leave it at that.”

Cas just stares, which… is par for the course, really. Deanna comes back with two beers, though when Sam reaches for one, she holds it aloft and then hands it to Cas.

“Oh no, this is for my stacked brunette. Dick.”

“Jerk.” He rolls his eyes. “So Cas…”

And he stops. Can he ask or is he already supposed to know, why Cas is with them on a simple enough vamp hunt? Or is it not as simple as they thought?

“You may not consume my beer, Sam.” She cocks her head to the side again for a moment, and then uncaps and drains the bottle. “That would subvert the purpose in bringing it to me and not to you.”

“Great. Cool.”

Deanna returns to her nachos, which is at least one familiar thing in an unfamiliar world. Sam’s other self has ordered some kind of roasted vegetable sandwich, which isn’t half bad-- he feels a little guilty for taking control of her body before she could get more than two bites in.

Deanna’s relaxed in a way Dean rarely is, the way he pretends to be sometimes. The way Sam used to believe was real, but this… this seems a little more genuine. If he’d realized it was Dean from the start, he’d have figured out she was doing that ‘believe I’m relaxed’ thing. Now, though… now she’s _fine_. Leaning on Cas and laughing around a mouthful of nacho, making the occasional silent offer until Cas gives in and puts one in her mouth and chews and swallows, looking supremely unimpressed. 

He can’t really figure out what he’s supposed to do here, things seem good. Then again, things seemed fine when Cas was human and then he up and ran out on them, so it’s not like he can just check out.

They head back to the motel, Cas agrees to meet them in the morning, and Sam still doesn’t know what this Sam does and doesn’t know. 

“Take a walk.” Deanna says, digging through her duffel. 

“Take a walk?”

“Yeah, a walk.” And she pulls out a device Sam doesn’t exactly _recognize_ , but he knows exactly what it’s supposed to _do_. Well, he has a vague idea, but he doesn’t want to know any more than he does about what it’s _about_ to do. “If I don’t get five minutes to myself, the next guy I gank might not be a vampire.”

“Five minutes?” His eyebrows make for his hairline. 

“Yeah, why, what’s five times six thousand?”

“What? Uh… thirty thousand.”

“Okay, well then five minutes gets me thirty thousand, you know, vibrations. So. Five minutes.”

“Is that good?” 

“It’s enough to keep me from feeling homicidal, given I haven’t had a good man in a friggin’ year. We aren’t all built to wait around for flowers and candles, Sammy, I’ve got needs. I am industrious enough to handle ‘em myself, but I’m gonna need that five minutes alone.”

“Right. Five minutes, you got it.” He raises his hands in surrender and lets himself out, hearing the lock behind him. The minute he turns to actually start walking, he just about walks right into soccer mom Cas.

“Hello, Sam.”

“Cas. Hey. What are you doing?”

“I am waiting until morning?” Her head cocks to the side. 

“You were just going to stand out here all night?”

“I thought it would be less intrusive than standing inside all night.”

“Where do you… where do you normally go?”

“If I have other duties to attend to then I do that. At present I do not.”

“Maybe you should come take a walk with me.”

Cas gives the motel room an uncertain look, just for a moment, but then she turns to accompany Sam. They walk across the parking lot to where there’s a cheap diner with a lounge that hasn’t been updated since the seventies. There’s still a cigarette machine, though it hasn’t been stocked in a couple good decades. 

They talk about nothing in particular as they make a circuit around the restaurant and lounge. It’s easier to adjust to soccer mom Cas than it is to adjust to Deanna, and he can only assume it’s because Cas isn’t really a man or a woman in the same way a human is. Nothing about Cas is really different-- even the knot in the big silk square around her neck is a little bit off, like one day it was done by a being who knew vaguely that this was a part of its host body’s everyday look, but not how to make it look nice, and it’s never been fixed. Or, if it’s been fixed, it’s been fixed by either Deanna or this Sam, who might have experience with a bandanna or a handkerchief, but not with a silk scarf. 

“Do I date men or women?” Sam asks, as they drop onto the bench out front of the place, a little too early for him to want to head back to the motel. “If you even know that, I guess maybe you don’t…”

“You were romantically entangled with a demon for a while, when we first met. I do not know your entire sexual history, Sam.”

“Ruby?”

“I don’t think so. On the occasion that I encountered him, he was occupying a male vessel, but that could have been a matter of convenience rather than preference.”

“Huh. Beggars can’t be choosers, I guess.”

“Does this trouble you?”

“Not really. I just-- I don’t know. I’m here for a day, so… like, if this Sam is, you know, strictly heterosexual, I don’t want to say something that would lead to a weird conversation for her tomorrow.”

“I am unaware of the strictness of your sexual orientation. I have never been interested to know.”

“That’s fair. You know, in my version of the universe, you got with a reaper once.”

“Hm.” Cas’ head tilts to one side as she digests this information. “Did I love her?”

“I don’t think so. Kind of hope not, given how it turned out, but I don’t know if you’ve ever done the, uh, love thing. We don’t really talk about that kind of thing.”

“Does your Deanna also have a strange preoccupation with not emulating ‘chick flicks’?”

“Dean.” He chuckles, watches the slight change in Cas’ expression as she digests this information but remains unruffled by it. “And yeah, bigtime. But that’s just on the outside. No, we just… don’t really talk about it. I mean, you-- the you I know-- isn’t really into sitting around talking about feelings, either. You usually get kind of prickly and disappear if I ask about your feelings, and talking love life woes with an angel is just kind of… weird. Not bad! Like I’m not saying you couldn’t talk about your feelings with your usual Sam if you wanted to, just… we have really different experiences of the world, and we feel feelings differently. So I don’t know, it could just wind up being kind of frustrating because we’d never know what the other was talking about. I didn’t, uh… I didn’t even really know if angels fall in love the way humans do.”

“Not the way humans do.” A soft frown creases her forehead, and she looks down at her shoes. They don’t match her outfit, which feels just about right somehow. Like she hadn’t quite understood coordination when she took them out of her vessel’s closet and hit the road. “But we can fall in love.”

“Good to know.”

After a long silence that hovers between comfortable and awkward, they head back to the motel, where Cas disappears-- not with a flutter of wingbeats, just into thin air.

“Goodnight, Sam.” She says, from the spot she’s apparently still standing in nearby. 

“Are you invisible?” He hisses. 

“Yes, in order to go unnoticed during the night. Humans sometimes find it disconcerting if they see me stand in a parking lot not moving for several hours, this seemed neater.”

“You wouldn’t rather come in?”

“It had not occurred to me to do so.”

Sam opens the door, holding it for her. He thinks he maybe feels her pass by, but he’s not sure. She doesn’t appear and she doesn’t speak, and when Deanna grumbles at Sam about air conditioning the motel parking lot, he comes in and locks and bolts the door. 

Cas is there in the morning either way, and goes off with Deanna while Sam stays behind in the motel room to do some last-minute research. 

If the research he does mostly involves bathroom mirrors, nudity, and the magic of multiple orgasms, that is nobody’s business but his own. Also the fifteen minutes solely devoted to rubbing his legs together like a cricket because they’re just so damn _smooth_.

“I’m going to miss you, Lady Sam body.” He groans, flopping back on the bed after showering and putting on pants at last. “And I am _really_ glad it’s not that time of the month.”

“Yeah, hunting vamps during shark week is the frigging _worst_.” Deanna agrees, bursting into the room just then and making him very glad he had put some clothes on. “Can never get the drop on ‘em. You got a lock on their location?”

“Uhh… yeah.” He jumps off of the bed and goes to where his supposed research is spread. The map on Chuck’s screen had been written on, and so is this one, the other Sam must have gotten the info before going to dinner last night. “Think we’re heading here. You get anything different?”

“We got jack squat on that, but it sounds like there’s maybe a dozen of those suckers.” She takes the map from him with a nod, and hands over a paper sack with BURGERVILLE printed on the side. “Good work. We’ll hit ‘em hard and get out fast.”

“Great. Hard and fast, just how we like to hit ‘em.”

She raises an eyebrow, but makes no comment. Sam’s not going to be in this world long enough to actually face the vamps head on. Though now he guesses he can chalk Cas’ presence up to there being a dozen of them, maybe-- does this Cas drop in to help them if they ask, on relatively normal cases? If Cas was actually hunting with them full time, he doesn’t think that’s the point where Chuck would drop him in.

Chuck, who’s wearing about the most punchable grin when he pulls Sam back out.

“You know I’m literally watching you the entire time you’re on one of your little field trips, right?” He says.

  
“ _Fuck_.”


	6. Baby, Come on Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chuck accidentally gives Sam a good old-fashioned family Christmas.

This time, Chuck doesn’t give him a highlight reel, so much as one big fight. Out of all the times he’s seen Cas and Dean’s friendship break up-- at least, all the times he can remember-- this is by far the ugliest. He kind of wants to reach through the screen and smack Dean upside the head, but the Sam in that world just takes Jack-- who’s a baby here-- and edges out of the room to leave them to it.

“You have no idea the things I had to engineer…” Chuck says, like this blow-up is his masterpiece. 

Well, given the nature of the bet, Sam guesses it is. 

So Jack’s a baby, their mom’s alive, Cas is alive, Dean’s being a raging asshole, Cas is being a _stubborn_ asshole… It’s somehow so much better and so much worse than the reality they all went through. For a moment, he’d thought it couldn’t get so bad, but they both seem intent on throwing every mistake ever made back at each other.

“You do know you still have to give me a chance to fix this.” Sam reminds Chuck. He’s afraid there are some things Dean’s not going to be able to take back.

“And you’ll get it.” Chuck says, touches his shoulder and sends him tumbling through the shaky chalk line between realities. 

When he lands, Dean is… hauling something big and wrapped in a tarp through the bunker. 

“What are you doing?” 

“What does it look like?” He drops the big, tarp-wrapped thing with a groan and stretches, rubs at his lower back.

“... Is that a Christmas tree?”

“Why don’t you quit your bitching, and help me with this thing?”

Okay, so it’s Christmas… ish. 

“Uh… sure, yeah. You feeling okay?”

“Peachy.” Dean snaps. “She’s gonna be back. You know… she needed some time but she’s gonna be back, so… I thought maybe we should try and…”

“Try and have a family Christmas with Mom?” Sam frowns. Apparently it’s just the two of them bumming around the bunker for now… He’s not sure where their mom is taking her down time from the old Winchester family drama, but Dean…

Dean doesn’t believe she’s coming back. Not before Christmas anyway. He wants to believe, he’s probably told himself if he does this and that right, she’ll just show up and be a mother to them. But there’s no faith under it, Sam can tell. 

“You don’t want a good old-fashioned family Christmas?”

“Sure.”

And so Sam gets the tree put in place while Dean starts something in the kitchen, and the two of them are stringing popcorn so that the tree is decorated with something other than a couple of protective amulets dug up from around the bunker and a couple of badly-made paper snowflakes. They’re still stringing popcorn-- and bickering aimlessly-- when Sam’s phone rings. 

“Y’ello?” He brings it up to his ear without checking the caller-- only so many people it could be-- and reaches out to smack Dean’s hand away from the popcorn, because he keeps trying to eat their decorating supplies, like he doesn’t have real food going in the oven.

“Sam? Is this a good time?”

Cas. Well, that makes sense-- he needs the chance to talk to him, otherwise this round can’t really count. He stands and moves towards the far corner, away from Dean.

“Yeah, I’m just… I’m doing nothing importan-- _dude, stop that, we’re not going to have enough_ \-- important, shoot.” 

“I’m in some trouble. Things are very bad for me now. I wouldn’t call on you if I had any other options, but--”

“I don’t care if you have other options, if you’re in trouble, you get your ass over here.”

“I understand Dean may--”

“I’ll handle that, just… just get here, ASAP.”

“I am outside the bunker now.”

Well… that’s about as ASAP as it gets.

“Okay, I’m hanging up, um-- I’ll see you.” Sam heads for the door, ignoring the questioning look from Dean-- and ignoring the theft of another handful of popcorn. Dean’s the one who wanted Christmas, if the popcorn chains aren’t super popcorn-y, it’s his own damn fault.

Sam lets Cas in, staring at the baby strapped to his chest. 

“He’s gotten bigger.” Cas shrugs, adjusting his hold on Jack’s diaper bag. He doesn’t appear to have any luggage of his own, just stuff for Jack.

“Yeah. Yeah, they do that.” Sam nods. “Someday he’ll be almost as tall as you. I mean, I bet. I mean, right? Savor these precious moments, you never know when he’ll be walking and talking and… yeah. Well hey, come on in. You’re just in time to do, um… holiday stuff.”

Dean’s at the bottom of the stairs when Sam brings Cas in, and Cas freezes as their eyes meet, his grip on the strap of the diaper bag tightens, knuckles white. 

“Hello, Dean.”

“Cas.” Dean swallows, his gaze drops. “Didn’t expect to see you back in town.”

“No, I… Sam invited me.” Cas swallows as well, his jaw clicks, Sam’s close enough to hear it. “I won’t trouble you for very long.”

“Okay, well, Sam’ll get you settled in. Don’t touch anything in the kitchen while I’m out, I’ll be back before it’s done.”

“Dean--” Sam jogs down the stairs, but his hand’s already grabbing his jacket.

“I’m going out.” Dean snaps, and that’s that.

“He’ll come around.”

“It’s fine.” Cas lies. “I understand, I am hardly his favorite person right now.”

“Yeah, well… he’s a stubborn son of a bitch. Come on. Room’s where you left it.”

He still walks him down there, takes Jack so that Cas can unpack and set things up. Watches him put Jack’s things into drawers. He pulls a cassette tape out of his pocket and places it on the nightstand, adjusts it to lay parallel to the edge, and then he hangs up both the baby bjorn and his coat in the closet and takes Jack back.

“Does he have a crib or-- I mean I guess like… a bassinet?”

“I hold him while he sleeps, to keep him safe. Sometimes I lie down with him.”

“Oh.”

“We can stay out of your way.”

“No-- come on. Come on, we’re not keeping you locked up in a single room, with a kid. At Christmas.”

“The date humans celebrate as Christmas is meaningless to me.”

“Will you shut up and come hang out in the kitchen? Or you can come see the tree, but it’s pretty disappointing.”

“The kitchen will be fine. I can feed Jack. Do you have milk?”

“Oh. Yeah, definitely. Um, we’ve got milk, yeah.” He takes Jack again, so that Cas can grab the things he needs-- a bottle, a little spoon with a rubber-coated bowl, a jar of baby food. Sam doesn’t feel super comfortable with a baby, he kind of misses grown up toddler Jack-- had its own challenges, but Jack could walk around on his own, speak when he needed things, use a toilet. 

Cute baby, though. Maybe it’s unfair to prefer his own familiar Jack on the basis of his not needing as much care, maybe Jack should have gotten to be a kid and grow up normal, instead of… like, every single thing that’s ever happened to him. 

In the kitchen, Cas heats up milk-- given Dean’s orders not to touch anything, he does it with his powers, which Sam guesses is also pretty precise. Nice to know he’s got his full complement of powers now, in this universe, because if he and Jack are on their own, he probably needs them. Cas alternates between trying to get Jack to eat strained carrots and helping him with his bottle, and then giving him a gentle jiggle and a backrub when he won’t eat more.

Maybe it’s unfair to Cas, that he didn’t get this in the real world, when he seems to enjoy fatherhood so much, seems to take genuine joy in the mundane feeding of an infant in his care. 

“How have you been?” Cas asks, when Jack has fallen asleep on his shoulder. 

“Busy.” Sam nods. “Well, you know. Normal busy.”

“Yes, of course.”

“You?”

“I am finding fatherhood… complicated. There are many joys, but… it is dangerous, trying to keep Jack hidden from his father. And I confess, I-- I don’t understand why Dean and I nearly came to blows over the issue. Even after months, I… I thought that we were in general agreement on right and wrong, and…”

“And Dean freaked out about Jack.”

“It must have been about more than only Jack… Maybe it was a long time coming, I don’t know. Maybe I-- Maybe there are some things which shouldn’t be forgiven, in the end. I’ve made many mistakes, and I’ve learned all too well about where good intentions can lead you. But I thought for sure-- I thought if anything would cause this rift between us, it wouldn’t be an innocent child.”

“Could you give him a chance to come around?”

“I don’t have much choice, I know the position I’m in. This is the one place I know that Jack and I can be safe while I rest and formulate a plan for whatever comes next. But of course I would. Of course. I just… Do you remember, once-- almost a dozen years ago, I suppose that’s a long time for you…”

“About a third of my life, I guess.”

“Yes. Do you remember there was a boy, Jesse? I would have simply ended his life before he could cause further harm, but neither you nor your brother would allow it. Dean was so kind… he had so much empathy for that child, you both did. I thought, when I spoke to him about Jack, that… I thought I would see that same love and empathy, but he was so angry. And so afraid. He felt so differently, when Lucifer was involved.”

“I guess we kind of have a history of clashing with Lucifer…”

“Yes. I understood that he feared bringing Lucifer into our orbit and exposing you to him, but I still had hope. When I agreed to take Jack, I was so sure that he wouldn’t be able to refuse… not if he saw him, held him…” Cas hangs his head, Sam spots a tear welling up, just one, rolling down his cheek. It feels wrong, seeing him cry. He hadn’t, in the video of the fight. He’d gotten angry and then he’d gotten cold and self-righteous and then he’d gone. “I missed this place.”

“It’s not exactly childproofed, I’m afraid.”

“I am very vigilant.” He chuckles, though it’s quiet and heavy with months of sadness. “I never need allow him out of my sight.”

“It’s not just me.”

“Hm?”

“Dean doesn’t only worry about me. Look, I know he said… he said some things, that he shouldn’t have. You said you’re not his favorite person right now, I can’t imagine he’s yours, either, but he wasn’t only worried about what Lucifer could do to me. He was worried about you.”

“You’re wrong.” Cas whispers.

“No, I’m really not. I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt, if Lucifer, you know, ganked you--”

“He is. My favorite person. I don’t think that can change. Although of course as Jack is a helpless infant who needs protecting from powerful forces of evil, I was forced to prioritize him, and I am certainly very fond of him also. I… feel very paternal sometimes, with him. But Dean… Dean taught me a great deal, about what I could be… what I am.”

Sam finds himself grinning-- much as being told Chuck was watching his adventures all across the multiverse had him longing for a shower at the time, picturing the look on his face now? Priceless. 

“So after all that, you like Dean more than any human you’ve ever encountered?”

“I care more for Dean than for any being or entity in the universe-- those that I have encountered in the past and those which I will encounter in the future. He is Righteous. That doesn’t mean he is never wrong.”

“Yeah, he’s definitely not never wrong… ugh, you know what I mean. I mean that’s my brother all right.”

“No offense meant, if I have implied that I care less for you to a degree you feel hurt by. You are a trusted friend-- you were the one person I knew I could turn to, who I thought would help me to keep Jack safe.”

“Yeah, none taken. I’m just glad you called, man.”

They’ve fallen into a quiet lull, when Dean comes into the kitchen, back from blowing off steam, and while everything about him gives off ‘angry stomping’ vibes, he doesn’t actually stomp-- he doesn’t make much noise at all as he checks on the oven, pulling out a roast with vegetables that have practically melted into the surrounding gravy. He starts making up plates-- three of them, the third of which he places in front of Cas, not meeting his eyes.

“I--” Cas starts, and Sam motions at him, cutting him off before he can say he doesn’t need to eat. “Appreciate this, thank you.”

“Yeah, well… there’s plenty. And it looks like it’s just us for the night, so… you might as well eat. Can’t hurt, right?”

“No. It can’t hurt.” He agrees, taking a bite. “The amino acid chains which make up the collagen in the meat have broken down considerably.”

“That good?” Dean grunts, brow furrowing.

“It makes for an easier eating experience and a more pleasant mouthfeel when this process occurs.”

  
“Good to know.” He actually laughs, at that. Well, he chuckles. Under the circumstances, it’s good enough. “Look, uh, Cas… if you and Rosemary’s baby are gonna be staying here, I-- I don’t know what kind of baby shit you’ve got and don’t got, but I figure, you know, with all the weapons and artefacts in the joint, uh… I ran out and I picked up a baby jail.”

“I really hope you mean a play pen and not like a dog crate.” Sam shoots him a look, but then he catches sight of Cas’ face.

“You did? Dean, I-- Thank you.”

“Hey, don’t go making out like this is some favor to you, I just don’t want a baby getting hold of a gun or nothing.” Dean looks away, shoves a too-large bite into his mouth as an excuse to not have to respond to anything else Cas might have to say.

“Well, I still think that is a good motivation, and I still appreciate it. I’m sure… I’m sure it may come in handy in the future if any other hunters you associate with… produce offspring. Or if either of you…”

“Not in the cards for me.” He’s quick to interrupt despite the mass of potato still half-chewed. He only gives it a couple more chews before swallowing. “But yeah, Sam might settle down and have kiddos one of these days. Not too late, right?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.” Sam shrugs. “If it happens it happens.”

Cas eats one-handed, the meat fork-tender, until Jack fusses a little, and after some bouncing and cooing, he mushes up a little gravy-soaked carrot and then offers that. 

“Yes, preferable to the jar, I know.” He nods, his tone conversational. “You didn’t care for the strained carrots from the Gerber corporation, I recall the complaints, but for the record this is also a carrot. Remarkable that it provides such a different experience, but this one was cooked with red meat, and I do believe that makes some difference. Dean made this. Dean went out and got you a play pen, which will paradoxically allow you far more freedom. Please don’t-- Jack, please don’t put your hand up my nose, we’ve had this discussion before several times, it is not sanitary nor do I appreciate it. I accept that the concept of sanitation is beyond you at this point, but please think about not doing it on the basis that it is uncomfortable for me, the owner of the nose.”

“That’s how you talk to a baby?” Dean gets up, moving around the table, though he doesn’t reach out to take Jack from Cas. Still, he leans in and goes into a gentle sing-song as he addresses him. “No, no, you gotta-- Hey there, champ. Hey, buddy. Who’s a big man? Can you give me a smile, huh, little guy? Yeah, like this, that’s good… You know where your nose is? Aw, good job, champ, that’s right, you got it. You got it.”

Suddenly, he catches himself baby-talking the son of Satan and he straightens up, coughing and turning away.

“Anyway, something like that. He, uh, he standing yet?”

“If I hold his hands he can pull himself up. He’s shaky. He can’t by himself.”

“Mm, no, that’s-- that’s good. Sam was, uh, Sam was just standing, that age, had to hold on to stuff. Couldn’t really walk even if I held him up-- but then, you know. I was four, and that kid grew like a weed, so… first couple months of trying to teach him to walk I ended up on my ass often as not. Jack’s a little too young to worry about that. Just… wanna make sure he’s, um… developing normally. Normal kid. No freaky stuff.”

“Nothing wrong with freaky stuff.” Sam feels motivated to say-- they’ll take it as him talking in defense of himself, but he can’t help but think about his own Jack, and what it was like raising him, freaky stuff and all.

“So far, no big display of powers. It gives me hope, that I can teach him responsibility as he comes into them in time. Excuse me-- it’s about time for me to change him.” Cas stands, the moment before Jack starts fussing. “I think I will try putting him down in the play pen afterwards, to see what he makes of it.”

“It’s all set up for you.” Dean nods. “Put it next to the map table, figured… dunno. Just seemed like a good spot.”

“Wonderful.”

“Having a baby around’s not so bad.” Sam says, as Cas exits and Dean returns to his dinner.

“Yeah, maybe. Still not thrilled about what we’re gonna do if daddy comes calling.”

“As long as Cas and Jack stay in the bunker, should be fine.”

“And if it’s not?”

“Then we’ll deal.”

Dean throws his head back with a sigh, stabbing aimlessly at his plate until he spears something, sitting back up so he can shovel it in, and for a while, they just eat.

“Mom would like having a baby around.” Dean breaks the silence at last, rising and taking his plate to the sink. “She didn’t, uh… didn’t really get to enjoy all the kid stuff. If she got back while they’re here, dunno… I think she’d…”

“Want to help?”

“Maybe. Want to hold a kid for a while. I don’t know.”

“Maybe.” Sam pushes the thought of his own world aside, and gets up to do the dishes. There’s the sound of fussing and crying from the other room, but only briefly, as Sam washes and Dean dries. 

When they leave the kitchen and find Cas, it’s to see him pacing back and forth beside the play pen, Jack up on his shoulder, gripping a stuffed lamb attached to a baby blanket by its plush hoof and giving it the occasional shake.

“And if you feel that you can’t go on, and your will’s sinking low…” Cas sings-- it sounds surprisingly nice for how gravelly his voice is, seems to settle Jack’s fussing further. “Just believe, and you can’t go wrong, in the light you will find the road. You will find the road… Oh, did you ever believe that I could leave you, standing out in the cold?”

Sam turns, and immediately forgets what it was he was going to say to Dean, at the look on his brother’s face.

“I know how it feels, ‘cause I have slipped through, to the very depths of my soul.” He joins in, soft, half-hesitant, and Sam’s seen Dean be good with kids before, good with a baby, but this… this is the most clear-cut case of baby fever he thinks he’s ever seen on an actual human being. “Ooh, baby, I just wanna show you what a clear view it is from every bend in the road…”

Yeah. Dean’s not kicking that baby out of the bunker. 

Sam leans in the doorframe, feeling a sense of satisfaction as he watches Dean cross to the two of them in a haze, small smiles exchanged as he and Cas sing Jack back to sleep. The way Dean reaches out, hesitant to actually bridge the gap, and the feeling he puts into ‘let me share your load’. When Jack drops the toy lamb, Dean catches it before it can hit the floor.

When Cas lays Jack back down, this time he doesn’t stir. Sam joins them in looking down into the play pen at him, little sleeping face with round, rosy cheeks, little fists balled up. 

“He, uh… he’s got good taste in music, that kid.” Dean refuses to meet anyone’s eyes, tossing and catching the lamb. 

“We only had one cassette tape, in the car.” Cas shrugs. “So he has heard it a lot. And he often falls asleep, when we drive.”

“Oh. Awesome. I mean-- that’s… good. That he, uh, sleeps.”

“I’m gonna hit the hay early.” Sam announces. “In case you guys need to…”

“Apologize for being a ‘stubborn, self-righteous ass-wipe’?” Cas says, mercifully with a note of good humor. 

“Or for, you know…” Dean sets the lamb down on the map table and shoves his hands into his pockets, shoulders hunching. “Being a ‘ridiculous, hypocritical coward and a--’ what was it, was it ‘butt-munch’?”

“I most certainly have never called anyone, let alone you, a ‘butt-munch’.”

“No, I’m pretty sure you did.” He chuckles. 

“I assure you, I remember every word we have ever exchanged, and I did not.”

“Right, right, it was ‘poopy-pants’.”

“That is incredibly juvenile and it is not what I said.”

“Well I’m not gonna repeat anything else we said in front of the kiddo. I don’t know when kids start picking up swears, but the first full sentence Sammy ever said was ‘oh shit, my shoes’.”

Cas laughs. “Was it?”

“Well, he threw ‘em and they hit the TV in the motel room, but you know. Baby shoes, the weak-ass arm of an eighteen month old… didn’t do much.”

“Right. I’m going before you decide to tell any more embarrassing stories about me.”

“I have so many!” Dean calls after him, only to wake Jack. “Oh-- oh, no, no, buddy, hey… hey, it’s okay… C’mere, c’mere, up! I gotcha, champ, let’s go for a little walk. You got any song requests?”

Sam heads up to his room, thinking warmly of his own world’s Jack, how eager he’d been to win Dean’s approval… he’d like to know that in this other world, he won it, too. That they all chose him just as sure as they all chose each other. Maybe if he ever tells this story…

In the morning, there’s a plastic bathtub on the map table, Dean perched beside it reading out loud from a book that’s definitely not baby-appropriate, but not child- _inappropriate_ either, using the baby talk lilt as he reads about trolls while Cas bathes Jack. 

Cas must have gone back to get the baby bathtub out of his car, if he brought a car? He’s got a yellow towel for Jack, with a hood that has a duck face on it. There’s a plastic penguin bobbing in the water that makes a sound whenever Jack tries to push it under and it bobs back up.

Or… maybe Dean bought the tub when he bought the play pen?

There are four lumpy packages under the tree now, where there had been two the night before-- both labeled in Dean’s handwriting, one for Sam and one for their absent mother. Since Sam didn’t add anything, he can guess the other two were picked up when he went out to obtain the play pen, so it’s possible the tub was bought at the same time. And even if it wasn’t…

Well, this time Sam feels like maybe he really can just relax and let the timer run out.


	7. Trampled Underfoot

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam finds himself back at a point in time he remembers, in another world. This time, everything goes a little sideways, from how he remembers...

The reel is less new information and more a reminder of where they once were-- this is when they were heading to Van Nuys, with Cas, before… Before Michael got Adam, before Cas got knocked down to human that first time. He winds up in the car, in the middle of mediating an argument about whether or not Dean is going to screw them all over by saying yes. 

He’s not going to, Sam had enough faith in his brother the first time around and now he’s not even worried about that. What he thinks he needs to do is convince Cas, who’s agreed to show them where they’re going, but Sam doesn’t think he’s agreed to go further with them. The highlight reel suggested he hadn’t. 

He focuses on winning Cas over on the drive, doesn’t lay it on too thick. He can’t say he’s done this before, he’s not exactly sure what he can say to convince Cas without being able to tell him it’s already happened for him and it worked. All he can do is assert his trust in Dean whenever the conversation allows.

Of course, every time he does _that_ , Dean turns the volume up, and when it’s up a little too loud to be comfortable and Sam turns in his seat to start trying to talk to Cas again, Dean just starts belting out lyrics. So that’s the end of talking about it.

“I have conditions.” Cas says, as they get out of the car, at the warehouse.

“Conditions? You mean you’re gonna help us?”

Cas frowns, and it couldn’t be clearer to Sam that he’s committed to it whether or not Dean agrees to his conditions-- but also, it’s that look he sometimes gets where Sam thinks he’s weighing whether or not knocking one of them out for a couple hours would make his life easier. Familiar ground.

“Sam, would you please wait by the car a moment while I speak with your brother? I wish to impress upon him the importance of what is to come and what I have given up, and what will happen if my sacrifice was in vain.”

“Look, Cas, whatever you need--”

“I need to speak with your brother. Alone.” He grinds the words out without looking at Sam, although Sam’s pretty sure Cas still _sees_ him. He stares at Dean a lot, but it doesn’t mean his awareness is limited to him. Angel senses. 

Sam holds up his hands and takes a step back, leans against the Impala and watches Cas and Dean conference, huddled up by the door to the warehouse. He can’t read Cas’ lips, mostly because he’s growling and grumbling under his breath and not moving them much, but he can see his expression past Dean’s shoulder, the earnestness in those difficult-to-read emotions. The importance behind whatever he’s saying. The open despair when he shakes his head and presses something into Dean’s hand, blocked by Dean’s body so that Sam can’t see what it is. He can guess.

Finally, Dean nods, and Cas looks like something just cut his strings, all the tension leaves him and he sags, head bowed. By the team Sam reaches them, he’s ready for a fight, tensed again, but it’s a better kind of tense.

“Cas…” Dean grabs for his arm, squeezes. 

“I am making this sacrifice, and whatever happens happens. It’s up to you, to save your brother. Get it right. Because if you do not… I won’t be there to help you clean up the next mess. If I return to your side and you have accepted Michael, he will put an end to me for my betrayal. You have one shot.”

“I get it. I’m not-- That’s not going to happen. If--”

“There is no ‘if’, Dean, if Michael takes you as his vessel, either we will never see each other again, or he will be wearing you when he kills me. I won’t be able to fight him.”

“No, I know. Nobody’s going to give Michael a meatsuit. God, you’re already on the run as it is, and… well. Are you sure about this? Going in there?”

“Am I certain of the outcome? It doesn’t look good. Am I certain of my own course of action? It… doesn’t look good, but I know what I’m going to do.”

Dean bites his lip, nodding, his hand still holding onto Cas’ arm.

“If I don’t get the timing right, you do what you gotta do. Do what you gotta do. I’m not gonna-- Nobody gets to use my body to kill my friend. That’s not happening.”

“Thank you, but I am not expecting clemency, so don’t try to bargain for me. It goes--”

“It goes the one way it can or we’re all pretty boned, got it.” Dean releases Cas at last, stepping back. “You’re really ready to be m-- to be our backup on this? Because it’s gonna be another level of betrayal, and you don’t have to--”

“Yes. I do. I’ve looked at all our options, Dean, I’ve thought about this. It would be nice to hope that we would not have to make sacrifices, but at this stage in the game…”

Sam steps in, wrapping his arms around Cas. True, he’s had days with various other versions of Cas, all of them familiar in some ways even if none of them have been his best friend exactly, but this… this is a Cas so like the Cas he remembers from back when, ready to sacrifice everything for a shot at saving the world with them, and this is the goodbye he didn’t get to have before Cas went with Dean and they lost him to the Empty.

“We’re gonna pull through this. He’s going to do what’s right. And… look, maybe we won’t win everything we want to and maybe there are going to be sacrifices and losses, but-- But it’s going to come out okay, I have _faith_ in that. This isn’t goodbye.”

“Then why are you embracing me as if you believe one or both of us will die?” Cas grunts, words muffled against Sam’s shoulder.

“Uh, I’m just…” He lets go, steps back. “I’m just glad you agreed to come with us. Real grateful.”

“Go on.” Cas nods, pulling the warehouse door open. Sam knows exactly where to go, at least. He’s done this once before, he doesn’t need to look back.

No matter how many times he does the thing where all of his organs fail because some angel is a huge dick, it never gets easier. He’d kind of hoped being prepared would count for something, but it’s still agonizing. 

He’s prepared for Dean to do a little fake-out. That’s how it happened before, and… okay, and Cas got blown across the country and temporarily lost his powers, but if he sticks with them through this and Dean doesn’t become Michael’s meatsuit, it’s still in the bag.

Except Dean doesn’t say what he said before, about killing Zachariah in order to become Michael’s vessel.

“If I say I’m ready to become a vessel, you’ll let my brothers go?” His stance shifts, his expression is drawn.

“Of course. Adam gets reserved seating in Heaven, and Sam-- well, Sam’s not _our_ department, but I’m sure we can swing something.”

Dean looks at Sam, then over at Adam, looks agonized for a moment. Sam’s vision is swimming, and he can barely hear him over… well, over what’s either an angelic presence or impending death, buzzing low in the back of his skull, he’s not sure which. Bad as it is, he’s still way too aware of Dean, looking at him like it might be the last time.

If he does this, that’s it, this universe goes to Chuck, putting them at… As far as Sam can tell, as far as he can think, this is Chuck’s second sure win, and while a couple look maybe pretty good for him, there’s only one he knows is ironclad, one where Cas absolutely cannot and will not leave them.

“Sammy… I’m sorry. This is the only choice I’ve got.” Dean says, and suddenly Sam’s organs are working, and suddenly Sam can’t breathe. Dean closes his eyes, head tilting back, he rolls his shoulders, tries for a couple good deep breaths as Sam struggles to get the words out. He’s not actively dying, but something stops his tongue just the same as he watches Dean prepare to become some dick angel’s puppet. “Okay…”

“Dean, no--” He finally manages, though it’s a rough croak, no power behind it. 

“Okay, put an angel in me.” He says, doesn’t seem to hear Sam at all, and light floods the room, light Sam has to shield his eyes from, and when he’s able to see, Dean isn’t Dean.

His posture is all wrong, stiff and almost mechanical in the way he stretches, like taking his body for a test drive instead of living in it the way he always has. He closes his eyes and takes one more deep breath, lips curling into a smile that’s both familiar and horribly, horribly _not_. One hand drifts up to his shoulder, slides halfway in across his chest before his arm drops back to his side and he… 

He changes somehow, or moves somehow-- shifts in a way Sam can’t process, but is dimly aware of. Like a satisfied nod that his body doesn’t follow through on, like briefly sensing the puppetmaster and not the puppet.

“Wait…” Zachariah takes a step towards him, and then it goes the way Sam remembers in his own world, with Dean ganking him. The difference, he guesses, is that this time it’s as part of some deal with Michael, rather than Dean avoiding the deal in the first place. 

He strides over to Sam and drops down to one knee, does it too fast to be human, expression completely impassive as he picks him up off the floor. 

“We need to leave. Now.” Dean’s voice says, though it’s not Dean’s cadence, it’s not _Dean_.

“What?” Sam stumbles along after him, back across the room to Adam. “Hey, don’t touch him, he’s not--”

He’s _healed_ , the realization stops him in his tracks. When Zachariah eased up, he wasn’t dying half as fast, but he wasn’t _healed_ , and he’s healed now. 

Dean shoots him an exasperated look that isn’t Dean’s, once he’s hauled Adam up, grabs Sam by the arm, and suddenly…

Suddenly, they’re in a completely dark building somewhere, Sam can only assume _not_ Van Nuys even though it could be another warehouse for all he can tell, and he feels like he might collapse, or puke. Adam very nearly does both, but manages to catch himself on both counts, before turning to stare at Dean with wary disbelief. If Dean wasn’t slightly… glowy, Sam doesn’t think he or Adam would be able to see much.

Dean is ignoring both of them. The moment he’s released them both, he’s holding onto his own shoulder. Not like it’s hurt, just like it’s more comfortable for him to stand that way. His head drops to one side, just slightly, his eyes close and it dims the glow, but there’s something soft and contemplative to his expression for a long, silent moment.

“What. The fuck?” Adam says at last.

“I need you to have learned an important lesson.” The angel inside Dean fixes him with a cold, hard stare. “You will disappear. I will be unable to find you. The others will be unable to find you. You will lead a normal life.”

“Yeah. Yeah, okay.”

He takes a step closer, staring Adam down, energy crackling around him. Sparks erupting somewhere, but not enough to illuminate much of the space they’re in.

“If I did not believe you meant to keep to our agreement, I would of course kill you where you stand, and Dean would be very upset.”

“Dean-- he’s still in there?” Sam steps in closer to both of them, and when Dean turns to him, it _is_ Dean.

“Yeah. I’m hunky-dory.”

“Wait, who’s driving?”

“Uh…” Dean glances off at nothing, at least nothing Sam can see in the dark, then turns back to face him. “That’s a complicated question.”

“Who killed Zachariah?”

“I did.” Dean isn’t the one to say. “I also healed you, and brought us here. But Dean was involved also, in all of these things.”

“Where is here?”

Dean laughs and drags his free hand through his hair, ducks his head. “We are going back for my baby, that’s non-negotiable. We’re in-- um, we’re in Illinois. Wow, um, okay.”

And then, not Dean anymore. “We won’t be discovered here. We can find a motel room for the two of you, for the time being. Dean and I will go back for the car when the coast is clear.”

“Give me one good reason why I should go anywhere with you.”

Dean’s brow furrows, and it’s not Dean’s expression, but Sam _knows_ it.

“Because.” Cas tilts Dean’s head to the side. “We are friends and you were grateful that I agreed to come with you. And earlier… was not goodbye.”

Sam laughs.

He’s still laughing when he opens his eyes and finds himself face to face with Chuck instead of Dean and Cas.

“That one’s fucking _mine_. No take-backs.”


	8. Sugar Mama

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam catches on.

“That’s not what was supposed to happen.” Chuck grumbles, waving an agitated hand towards the screens and starting up the next highlight reel. 

Sam sees himself, in his crib. Sees his father killed that night instead of his mother, and then it’s speeding through his childhood growing up with Dean and their mom, and there’s a lot that isn’t different-- she changes, too, she gets hard and she drinks a little too much and she throws herself back into hunting. Sam still runs away a couple of times, but when he goes off to Stanford it’s with her understanding, if not her blessing, and he thinks Dean makes it through their childhood without getting hit, outside of the occasional light tap when he’s being taught to fight. 

Sam’s childhood is pretty much the same, since it’s still just Dean raising him in a series of motel rooms most of the time. A couple stretches at Bobby’s. A lousy apartment that they stay in for four years so Sam’s high school can be uninterrupted-- Dean still drops out, but he gets his GED the year Sam graduates, they study together. They seem… okay. Not good, but okay. 

He’s not sure if he envies this version of himself or not, all things considered-- he thinks he’s done okay with the lot that he was handed. But he wishes Dean had gotten to be this Dean. The Dean who slept with his head in Mary’s lap in the front of the Impala at age four, parked outside a rest stop, Led Zeppelin for a lullaby. The Dean who took over making the sandwiches for all three of them because they weren’t being parented, but at least in this world he had a mother who would absently pat at his head and tell him he’d done good. Call him the man of the house, even if the house was a motel room, then put the baby in his arms and go out hunting, and… 

And maybe none of it is such a huge difference in the grand scheme of things, maybe Sam came through about the same, but Dean… for him, it was different. Maybe not much, but enough. The Dean he sees in the sped-through version of their lives, in the brief clips he sees at regular speed and the moments a hair’s breadth off from what he remembers, that Dean seems less guarded-- well, he’s guarded, in terms of being a hunter, and it’s not like he’s any more prone to chick flick moments, but there’s something about him that’s lighter and more honest.

As for Cas… as far as Sam can tell, Cas is normal. They’re on friendly enough terms, he doesn’t live in the bunker all the time in this world but he shows up often enough, and they help each other out. Actually, it seems like Cas not living in the bunker is a whole big Thing in this world, because he’s locked out of Heaven and he’s not really living anywhere, but he won’t just move into one of the open rooms, and if there’s a reason why, Sam doesn’t see it, but he can at least guess that that’s the problem he ought to be trying to fix.

He gets dropped in in time to see Dean take out the witch they’d been hunting, though not in time to help.

“Friggin’ witches.” Dean spits, wiping frantically at his face, and the viscous, inky purple substance that he’d had flung at him. “This curse better not be genital warts.”

“You think that’s the worst think he could have cursed you with?”

“Maybe not but I still don’t want ‘em. Ugh, son of a bitch slimed me!”

“Maybe I should drive. In case you go blind or keel over.”

Dean gives him a sour look, but he tosses him the keys anyway, as they head back to the car. Pulls a towel out of the trunk when they stash their gear-- not to wipe off more of the gunk he’d been splattered with, but to lay out on the seat.

“Maybe we should call Cas.” Sam adds.

“What does Cas know about curses?”

“I don’t know, he knows a lot of stuff, he’s been around a long time. He’s healed weird shit before.”

“I’m not calling Cas over a weak-ass witch boy.” He rolls his eyes. “We go back to the bunker, we hit the books, we figure out what this is, and if ganking the witch didn’t break the curse, we find out what does and we do it, it’s not a big deal. I don’t even feel anything.”

“I’m just saying, it could be anything, and I don’t think it’s unreasonable of me to worry about you. And if Cas was here, maybe--”

“I don’t need to call Cas.” 

He lets the conversation drop, and doesn’t say anything when he catches Dean’s head bobbing along a little to his choice in radio stations. There’s a pretty solid middle ground of stuff they can both listen to without wanting to murder each other, if they’re honest, and maybe in this world they are. Maybe instead of fighting over it they just admit when something’s a bop even if it’s not in their preferred genre. 

“You can start researching without me while I take a shower, right?” Dean asks, as they pull into the garage.

“Sure. But I’m calling Cas.”

“Seriously?”

“If nothing else, he’s a fast reader.”

“... Yeah, good point. Eh, it’s nice having him around, I mean, if you think we really need someone else on this.” Dean shrugs. “Don’t make a big deal out of the whole… me getting cursed thing. I’m not feeling anything weird, just… you know, tell him if he wants to help us hit the books, there’s a beer and a burger in it for him. He’s gonna try and say he doesn’t eat, but then he’s gonna want one once he smells ‘em.”

“I’ll let him know.” Sam rolls his eyes. Okay, so this might be a somewhat less stony and repressed version of his brother, but he’s still trying and failing to pretend he’s not embarrassed about getting hit in the face with cursed slime fighting a pretty novice witch. That feels about right somehow.

Of course, Sam just gets Cas’ voicemail, which he maybe shouldn’t be surprised about…

“Would you call Cas?” He hollers, when he hears Dean coming back from the shower, still singing to himself. “He’s not picking up for me. You’re the one he always comes running for when you bat your eyelashes.”

“I don’t think my eyelashes have anything to do with it.” Dean snorts, coming into the room, hair wet. “Although they are very pretty.”

Dean is wearing clean clothes, which isn’t a surprise, considering the gunk, it’s just… Okay, the jeans aren’t weird, they’re just jeans. The socks with the bright colored dinosaurs aren’t-- well, they’re weird, but normal Dean weird. 

The tee shirt that says BEST BI in big block letters on a pink, blue, and purple tag shape? That is not something the Dean in his universe owns. 

“What?”

“Nothing. Is that a new shirt?” He hopes that covers anything-- it’s not as faded as most of the shirts he’s used to his own Dean owning, it’s gotta be somewhat recent. 

“Charlie found it.” He beams, pointing to his chest as if it was in any way subtle. “She understands my love of wordplay. We are a modern day Algonquin Round Table.”

“Yeah, I’m sure. I don’t think they played Dungeons and Dragons on the Algonquin Round Table, Heywood Broun.”

“You’re just jealous that there are no good pun-based shirts for being straight.”

“... Yeah. I’m burning with jealousy. Would you just call Cas? And maybe pick up a book?”

Dean grabs a book, flipping through looking for information on curses transmissible by slime, though he doesn’t take a seat at the table, just plants a hand next to the book and bends over it.

“Our Cas who art somewhere, hallowed be thy dumb face, get over here and save my ass, wise man said just find your place, in the eye of the storm. Seek the roses along the way, just beware of the thorns, so here I am, will you send me an angel? Here--” Dean’s phone buzzes, and he pulls it out of his pocket. “Yo, Cas. Yeah, Sam’ll get the door… Uh-huh, he’s just worried about a thing, it’s no big deal. Hey, as long as you’re here, though, you know, I can make dinner for three as easy as for two...”

Sam raises his eyebrows at having been volunteered, but since Dean seems disinclined to move and it was his idea to call Cas, he gets up and goes to let him in. 

When he opens the door, Cas is still on the phone, smiling faintly, and he holds up a hand. “Dean? Sam has just opened the door, I’m going to hang the phone up. Please elaborate once I join you… No, about the curse-- Yes, of course… Yes, I’ll be there directly. Hello, Sam. Dean’s suffered no ill effects yet, I take it?”

“I don’t think so, but he definitely got _covered_ in slime when we fought that witch. So your phone does work?”

“Sorry.” He hangs his head, for about half a second, which is something at least. “I had insufficient coverage. I didn’t sense any particular distress or personal need when you called-- Prayer is much more reliable. The phone keeps telling me I have only one bar.”

“Okay, well… no big, the important thing is you’re here and you can help us figure out what’s going on with Dean.”

Dean’s where Sam left him, which is encouraging in that he’s not twitching and drooling on the floor or trapped in another dimension or anything. The only change is that his elbows are on the table, ass in the air.

“What can you tell me about this curse?” Cas asks the both of them.

Dean looks over his shoulder, highlighter hanging out of his mouth where he’d been chewing the cap, and after a moment of just staring at Cas like there’s no fucking rush, he finally stands up. Stretches lazily before he even takes the highlighter out of his mouth, let alone answers.

“He slimed me.” Dean says, scratching idly at a spot just below his sternum and then stretching again. 

“Have you felt any ill effects since the sliming? Did the witch say anything when you were exposed to the slime-- it would help if you recognized the language, but it’s not a barrier if you’re unsure.” He strides over, grabbing Dean and examining his pupils, feeling his forehead, things Dean submits to without protest, in spite of all his arguing earlier. 

“It was just the slime. The slime was purple and it smelled seriously _rank_ , but there weren’t any magic words.”

Cas leans in and sniffs, which Sam expects Dean to object to-- his Dean would tell Cas to cut it out and that humans don’t generally consider it socially acceptable to sniff each other. This Dean… doesn’t do that.

This Dean is kind of leaning into it, actually.

“You don’t smell ‘rank’.” Cas frowns up at him. “You smell like vanilla. And sandalwood.”

“Well, I did, you know, wash it off.”

“Dean, how am I supposed to analyze this cursed ‘slime’ if you haven’t preserved the evidence?”

“... I haven’t done laundry yet.”

Cas looks at him expectantly until Dean rolls his eyes and leads him off to smell his laundry for clues, an activity Sam is perfectly happy to skip out on. When they get back, Cas is carrying Dean, his expression grim.

“What happened?” Sam hesitates between jumping out of his chair and looking Dean over himself-- it may be another universe, but that’s still his brother-- or trying to research faster, somehow. 

“The curse isn’t the most serious, but it is progressing more rapidly than usual.” Cas reports. 

“It’s okay, I’m not going anywhere.” Dean adds. 

“No, not without assistance, your legs have stopped working.”

“They haven’t ‘stopped working’, they’re just… Look, we know what’s going on and we’re going to fix it before it gets bad.”

“At this stage you should still be walking.”

“I can walk!”

Cas glares at him, depositing him in an armchair, and then holding up a hand like he’s telling a dog to stay. 

“Don’t hurt yourself. Sam and I can handle things from here.” Cas orders, and this time Dean doesn’t argue, just watches as Cas strides through the library, then deposits the book he wants in front of Sam, opening it to the correct page. “I will procure the necessary ingredients, it should be simple, but with the rapid acceleration, it’s important we break the curse quickly. Paralyzing weakness shouldn’t set in before the second day. If it spreads to his organs… I can heal damage, of course, but the curse will need to be broken or it will keep happening.”

“I’ll start reading.” Sam nods, and Cas vanishes.

“I fucked up.” Dean groans. 

“You took the witch out, getting hit with something could have happened to anyone. Did you do something that made it… faster? Should you have not showered? Or… I don’t know--”

“No, I fucked up.” He crosses to the table, he’s on his feet before Sam can tell him not to. He makes it without faltering, much less falling over. “Cas was telling me about the curse, he recognized the slime, and I… So he said ‘first, your legs will give out’, and I was-- Let’s say as a joke, I…”

“You are such a dick, you pretended to fall over?”

“No! I mean, not-- I didn’t fall over. I did a little fake wobble and caught myself against him and before I could say anything, he got super serious and said ‘on the second day’, and then I felt, you know--”

“Like a _dick_?”

“Like a massive dick, but he picked me up, Sam! Like I weigh nothing! What was I supposed to do?”

“You were _supposed_ to say ‘sorry for freaking you out, that was a joke but I realize now it was in poor taste’! You were supposed to not freak _me_ out by getting carried in here like you were dying! I should tell him.”

“This is humiliating enough, the man smelled my dirty laundry, I can only take so much.”

“It would be your own fault, too, but honestly, the last thing I want today is to set off a weird fight between you two.” Sam sighs. “Especially when you’ve got him staying for dinner.”

“... Yeah?”

“Well.” He shrugs. “You know. It’s… Having Cas around is pretty good for us, and it’s not like he actually lives anywhere else. I’ve kind of been wondering when he was gonna move in.”

Dean’s eyes go wide, his eyebrows shooting up, his jaw slack. “You were… wondering that? You’ve thought about Cas moving in?”

“Is that weird?”

“Well, I mean-- Shit.” Dean paces around in a brisk circle before he drops back into the armchair where Cas had placed him. “It’s not like I haven’t hinted around. I figure if he doesn’t want to, if it feels like it’s not the right time or he doesn’t want to, uh, I dunno, if that’s too much of us…”

“Hinted around? This is Cas we’re talking about, I don’t think hints work.” Sam laughs, and then he sees the look on Dean’s face and he stops laughing fast. “What did you say?”

“You know. Mentioned there was a lot of space, he agreed. Said there would always be a bed if he wanted one, he reminded me he doesn’t sleep, we kind of went around in circles a little. Bottom line, he’s an angel, so like… the concept of needing a ‘home’ is, you know, giving a fish a bicycle, or something.”

“Did you try just asking him if he wanted to stay?”

“Sure, yeah, I’ll just say ‘hey, I know you could go anywhere in the world and spend all your spare time on a beach somewhere and see all the wonders of the world and travel around with the time zones and live in a world that never sleeps or closes or runs out of neat stuff to experience, but what do you think about giving all that up to live underground with a couple of dumbass mortals. We can’t offer much in the way of entertainment, but you can pull our bacon out of the fire on a regular basis’, that’s enticing.”

“Or ‘hey, Cas, since you’re stuck on Earth because you sided with us, you should stay here, you could have a room of your own and keep things in it’. Seriously, why not ask him?”

“You ask him.” Dean folds his arms, not looking at Sam.

“Yeah, that makes sense, I’ll ask him. The one he never answers the phone for. Not the guy he dropped god like a bad habit for.”

“Makes perfect sense. If he says no to you, it’s not a big deal.”

“Dude.” Sam stares for a long moment. His brain steadfastly refuses to click things into place but he can feel it hovering in the back of his head, waiting.

Cas appears, bearing an armload of counterspell ingredients, which he dumps unceremoniously on the table near Sam before sweeping across to Dean, checking him over, and Dean just looks…

Happy.

_Oh_.

Dean in this world, bi Dean, he’s in love with Cas.

_Oh shit_ , the difference between this Dean and his Dean isn’t that this Dean is bi, it’s that he’s open about it, his Dean… his Dean is in love with their Cas, the Cas that died for him, he has been for at least two deaths, maybe more, he’s just a repressed dumbass. 

_Oh holy fuck_ , Sam’s not just trying to keep the two most stubborn people-- or entities-- he knows from destroying their potential friendship, he’s got to get these idiots _together_ , because even the most emotionally available version of Dean is bad at this. 

Well, a little fear of rejection makes sense, honestly, but… 

Okay. Okay. Sam can do this. He’s got to.

Breaking the curse is the easy part. Processing the notion that Dean pretended to have his legs go out from under him so that Cas would catch him is… weird. 

Not the part where Dean is bi, which honestly makes more sense than Dean being straight, but Dean being into getting carried, that’s… that part’s weird.

“You’re staying for dinner, right? Burgers and beers.” Dean asks, standing well within the bubble of Cas’ personal space-- or maybe it’s the other way around-- after Cas has finished checking him over and been satisfied.

“You would like me to?”

“Well yeah. Owe you one, don’t I?” Dean winks, and saunters towards the kitchen. _Saunters_.

Although… Sam’s pretty sure Cas is looking. It’s hard to say, since Cas is pretty much always staring at Dean, but…

  
 _Right_.


	9. No Quarter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam really gets a look at what mediating between the two most stubborn, self-loathing assholes he knows can entail.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My productivity has returned from the war!

Dean asks, before Sam’s time is up, before he’s yanked back out. Actually asks Cas to stay, without tiptoeing around it and trying to make it about what Cas wants or doesn’t want. He’s feeling pretty good about this, when he winds up back in Chuck’s office, he’s getting used to the idea of Dean and Cas _together_ \-- really, the more he thinks about it, the more he wonders why he didn’t see it earlier. 

The next highlight reel doesn’t look good. Cas isn’t human, but his powers _are_ on the fritz, his wings are… well, Sam’s not sure what happened there, but he knows they’re not working. He sees Dean injured badly on a hunt, at the end of the reel, and when he’s dropped into this world, he’s behind the wheel of the Impala.

“Shit!” The car jerks, he nearly overcorrects. Judging by the weather, he should be watching out for ice on the roads. Trust Chuck to pick this moment to slam him into.

“He’s stable.” Cas says, from the backseat, where he’s got Dean lying in his lap and the two of them look like they just stumbled off the set of a Tarantino movie. Cas looks as strained and as breathless as Dean does, both their faces drawn with pain and kind of sweaty.

“I don’t know where I’m going.” Sam says, because this is no time to bullshit his way through things, stable or not. 

“Just keep driving. I’ll tell you when to turn.” Cas promises, and there’s an effort under the evenness of his voice, there’s something hard-won about his composure, but Sam trusts him. Even if he had another choice, he thinks he would.

Okay, so… Cas definitely brought them to somebody’s house, like somebody’s actual empty vacation home, which is not ideal, but given how bad the roads were getting… Sam breaks in, Cas standing beside him on the little cabin’s porch, holding Dean in his arms. 

It’s a little A-frame, most of it squeezed into a single room-- though there’s a second bed up in a loft, which Sam guesses he’ll be taking, and what he assumes is a bathroom. There are a couple of armchairs flanking the fireplace, a queen bed directly in front of it, and in the back corner there’s a kitchenette, a couple of dining chairs stacked against the far wall. Looks like a table folds up from behind the headboard of the bed. Weird, but it’s certainly a use of space.

There are sheets over most of the furniture, and since Cas is standing there holding Dean and looking half ready to collapse himself, Sam whips the sheet off the big bed first, before getting the rest of them out of the way and trying to make the place temporarily habitable.

“What kind of maniac sleeps in a bed that’s not even against a single wall?” Dean grumbles, as Cas deposits him on said bed. 

“You do, for now.” Cas drops down to one knee and starts removing Dean’s boots, ignoring the instant-- but somewhat weak-- complaint that comes when he does. “You’ve lost a good deal of blood.”

“Wouldn’t call it ‘good’. Cas-- c’mon, man, I can-- You don’t have to tuck me in, I’m not a baby.”

“You’re _injured_.” He argues, getting Dean wrestled out of his jacket and tucked into bed.

“You _healed_ me.”

“Well I didn’t do a very good job.”

Sam pauses, in his fire-building efforts, hadn’t expected Cas to snap. Usually he can take a lot more provocation-- though ever since he learned sarcasm, there’s a middle ground between ‘wearily letting the shit pile on’ and ‘reminding everyone present how easily they could be smote’.

“I’ll be fine.” Dean sighs, but it’s not what Cas needs to hear, because Cas just walks out of the cabin. “Fuck.”

“You took a pretty rough hit, just sleep it off for now.” He gets to his feet, dusting his hands off. “Gonna go run the taps a little, flush the toilet a couple times, make sure the pipes don’t freeze up on us, and then… shit, I don’t know. Start taking inventory? We can move on once the road’s safe enough. I’ll pull up the weather forecast in a minute.”

Dean just hums, already half asleep, and after Sam lays down salt lines, he ducks into the bathroom, makes sure the water’s running and that they have toilet paper and soap. He’s checking the kitchen sink when Cas comes in carrying basically all their stuff. Not the gear they keep in the trunk for hunts, but all their personal crap and a couple bags of what Sam hesitates to call ‘groceries’, given that Dean bought them at the last gas station, but… well, shit’s edible. He hopes.

“Thanks.” Sam nods to him. 

“Of course. Is there anything else I can do?”

“You look kind of ready to fall over, maybe you should just… sit for a minute.”

Cas bristles. “I can still be useful.”

“Well, you can be more useful later if you sit for a minute now. Besides… nothing left to do.”

He motions for Cas to join him in the armchairs, but Cas does not. Instead, he sets about putting things from the QuikStop into cupboards in the kitchenette, which is more dignity than beef jerky, chips, and snack cakes really deserve. 

“I guess we’ll be making a meal out of… that.” Sam sighs. Dean… He couldn’t even buy a loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter? Then again, he didn’t know this was going to happen. They were supposed to be out on the road, miles from the next kitchenette where they could expect to spend a few days making sandwiches. 

Cas looks at Dean a long moment, and then he strides out of the cabin again. 

“... Great.”

“Cas gone?” Dean asks, cracking one eye open-- barely. 

“He’ll be back… nowhere for him to go.” Sam shrugs.

“Shouldn’t have let him come.”

“You’d be dead right now if we hadn’t.”

“Maybe… ‘s dangerous. He’s just… he can’t do all that stuff. Should just… try and…”

“Try and what? He’s not exactly built for that apple pie life, Dean. At least when he hunts with us, we can help him learn not to rely on all the powers he’s used to having. Save the angel mojo up for when he needs it. You really think he’d do better off on his own? You think he’ll never run into trouble? No one’s ever going to come for him because he’s low on juice and no one’s watching his back? He’s better off with us.”

“No one’s better off with us.” Dean’s head rolls to the side, his gaze unfixed on the wall. “Can’t do this again. He pushed himself too far today.”

“Yeah, saving your life.” 

It’s the wrong argument, he gets that immediately, once the words are out. Hadn’t his own Dean told him, what feels like a solid week ago now? And he still hadn’t realized the kind of love he felt, not even knowing he felt like there was nothing for him in a world without Cas, no point to living. He doesn’t want Cas stretching himself on his account, not even if it works out. Not if it means any kind of risk to him.

Well shit, so now he’s got to deal with Dean actively pushing Cas away for his own good, because he never quite gets that other people should get to make choices, even if the choice is thinking Dean Winchester deserves to be taken care of once in a while… Because he never quite gets that yeah, maybe if you stand there shouting ‘go on, can’t you see I don’t want you anymore’, someone might actually believe that, and have feelings about it-- because he absolutely doesn’t get that someone could have actual positive feelings towards him. Because he’s an _idiot_.

Oh, and Sam’s officially reached the age where he’s turning into Bobby. Although, as far as father figures to turn into go… Yeah, no contest.

It’s dark out when Cas comes back in, stomping snow off his shoes, soaked through. He trudges into the kitchen with a bulging QuikStop plastic bag, though before Sam can ask if he walked to the nearest gas station and back, Cas starts emptying it and he realizes he was out _foraging_.

“Winter chantarelles.” He says, holding one up. They seem to make up the bulk of what he’d found. Then again, there can’t be much out there-- at least, Sam hopes they don’t get reduced to lichen and birch bark.

“That’s great. Do you… want to warm up?”

“I’m fine.”

“Okay, well… will you come hang out by the fire until you’re dry because looking at you is making _me_ cold?”

“... If it would bring you peace of mind.” 

“It would, thank you. These are all… edible? Non-toxic, non-hallucinogenic?”

“Yes, Sam, I would not bring you something that could harm you.”

“Sorry, right. Just… I didn’t know you knew about mushrooms.”

“They’re a fascinating lifeform.” Cas hangs up his coat, slips out of his shoes, and stands by the fire in his socks and his shirtsleeves. Still soaked, but… well, he’ll dry over time.

Time Sam can use to try and make what is probably the least appealing mushroom soup ever, because all he’s got is mushrooms, salt, and water, but hey. 

“I’m glad to remain useful.” Cas says, something distant to his voice, and Sam gets his pot started heating, before joining him. 

“Of course you’re useful. But that’s not-- You don’t have to prove yourself.”

“This is the best I could do. And it isn’t enough.”

“Cas…”

He shakes off Sam’s hand, moving to stand by the bed. “It isn’t enough.”

“He’s going to be okay.”

“But if I were still what I was, he would be better.” He says, and he almost touches Dean’s forehead, he reaches out and then he stops himself. “I don’t belong here.”

“Of course you-- Well, no, not here, I mean… none of us belong _here_. But with us, Cas. With your family? Aren’t we that?”

“You know what happened to the last family I could lay claim to.”

“Cas…”

“You know how many of them I slaughtered? And even when I wasn’t poised against them, how many suffered because of me? How many Fell around me? How many were extinguished under my banner? Do you know what it means, to call me ‘family’? I don’t belong here.”

“You saved Dean’s life. That means something to me. Besides… you seen the rest of our family lately?”

“It’s hardly the same.”

“You kidding? So the biggest mistake of your life was trying to fill the shoes of an absentee father who, let’s face it, we’re better off having absent, so you’ve dragged people through the ringer with you, so there have been some mildly fratricidal moments. Do you know what we call that?” He waits for Cas to lift his eyes, though the hangdog expression doesn’t leave him. “An invitation to the Winchester family reunion. Signed, sealed, delivered.”

“It’s not the same.”

“It’s good enough for us.”

“If I was stronger, he wouldn’t be in this condition.”

“Maybe not, but when he wakes up, you know what he’s gonna do? He’s gonna lecture you about how you shouldn’t have pushed yourself to heal him as much as you did.”

Cas sits on the edge of the bed, his hand rests over Dean’s midsection, rising and falling with his breaths. “I could have done more. I could have done a little more. I was afraid… I was afraid that if it was too much at once, he might still need me, and I would be too weak to do more. That we could both be entirely reliant on you. As it is…”

“As it is, you saved his life, and I’m grateful. And whatever happens next… I’d rather have both of you, okay? Whatever shape you’re in, I’d rather have both of you.”

Cas doesn’t answer. He makes his own circuit around the place, such as it is, does his own work warding it against everything he’s got a ward for. Sigils Sam recognizes and a couple he doesn’t. Sam works on the soup, and things are quiet for a while. Cas’ guilt follows him around like a dark cloud, but there’s nowhere he can go, and Sam knows Chuck must have been edging them towards a breaking point, must have wanted one of those big break-up fights to go down while the three of them are stuck together getting cabin fever-- according to his phone, they’re going nowhere soon, so the other Sam is just going to have to deal with that-- but if he can redirect things now… Maybe they were careening towards a big argument over who’s the horrible burden on whom and who’s the worst and who would be better off without the other, but they don’t need to be.

There’s not much for entertainment, but there’s a record player, and Sam puts on something he doesn’t think anyone will object to before serving up bowls of mushroom soup. Not exactly just like mom used to make… though at least he can say he’s living up to her legacy of not being great in the kitchen. He nudges Dean awake, nods to Cas for help sitting Dean up-- and of course Dean bats weakly at both of them for daring to help him when he nearly died that afternoon.

“You’re lucky we don’t hold you down and spoon-feed you.” Sam threatens. He’s pretty sure Cas is considering it. Instead, he goes outside again, and Sam sighs heavily. “Try not to… you know.”

“Try not to what?”

“Cas has feelings. Right now, he’s kicking himself because he couldn’t just fix you up like nothing happened.”

“No internal bleeding. No broken bones. I’m fine and dandy. Ugh, what _is_ this? Is this dirt and salt?”

“It’s mushroom soup, jerk.” Sam takes a bite. “Oh, okay, that’s… It’s what we _have_.”

“Might wanna check the expiration date on that can.”

“When Cas gets back, _please_ try and pretend you don’t hate the soup.”

Dean frowns into his bowl. “He make this?”

“No. I made it, and it’s _awful_. But he got us the mushrooms, and he’s really touchy about not being full-strength. And I asked, they’re definitely edible.”

“Sam, Cas wouldn’t _poison_ us.” He rolls his eyes. “And you think I’m the one trampling all over his feelings?”

“Just let him feel helpful, okay? I know it’s not your favorite thing in the world, but considering the shape you’re in, maybe… chill. Let him check up on you a little.”

“Sam, you’re my brother, and if you ever loved me, you’ll dump this soup down the drain before Cas gets back, I am not eating this.”

“Oh yes you are, if you want your dang Ding Dongs.”

The look Dean gives him is priceless, the impotent fury of an older brother being told if he doesn’t eat his vegetables, he’s not getting dessert, and even if he could get out of bed and to the kitchen, Sam put them up on the top shelf, and he doesn’t actually think Dean can get them if he nudges them back.

“You ungrateful bitch, in all the years I fed you, I never made you eat something this disgusting.”

“Dean, you tried to get me to eat _fried butter_ once.”

“That was at the State Fair! We got to pet bunnies, Sam, I took you on the Scrambler! And you want to compare the culinary delights to be found in that veritable paradise to your cream-less mushroom soup? Mushrooms anywhere but a pizza are just--”

“I wouldn’t call anything I saw you eat at the State Fair a ‘delight’. Could you _please_ \--”

The door opens, and the bickering grinds to a halt, as Cas comes in with an armload of wood, brought from the shed around back of the cabin during a brief break in the rain. He deposits it by the hearth, looking to them. Dean takes a bite of soup and tries to pretend it’s palatable. 

“Mushrooms. Nice.” He says, and forces himself to swallow another bite. 

“This time of year there are fewer opportunities to forage.” Cas apologizes.

“No, it’s-- food, that’s-- I wasn’t prepared. I couldn’t have fed us. I got one bag of chips, some Ding Dongs, and a buncha jerky. And I’m pretty useless in survival situations right now.”

Cas’ face just crumples in on itself. “My fault.”

“What? No-- no, it’s not-- It’s not your fault I wasn’t faster in that fight, it’s definitely not your fault I got hit. The only thing that’s your ‘fault’ is that I’m still breathing, I fucked up and I’m lucky I’m not dead--”

“You don’t take an angel on hunts so he can stand around wringing his hands and repeatedly failing to reload a firearm. I should have smote our enemies and healed your wounds.”

“Cas--”

“Excuse me.” He walks back out, _again_.

Dean looks miserable enough that Sam bites back the ‘what did I tell you’ on the tip of his tongue, and wrangles his facial expression into something a little less accusatory. 

“He’s gonna get cold.” Dean flops back against his pillows, though they still prop him up upright.

“Let him take a walk, and if he’s not back in a few, I’ll go get him.” Sam pats Dean’s knee. “Eat your soup.”

Dean looks like he’s considering Sam’s culinary efforts the punishment he deserves for saying the wrong thing with Cas and driving him out of the cabin. 

“I’d be fine if he was human, you know.” He says, after a few more minutes of the two of them steadily eating the worst thing Sam’s ever made.

“You’d be dead right now, dude.”

“No-- Yeah, maybe. I mean I don’t _care_ if he is.”

“I know you don’t.”

“I mean, I care.” He groans, letting go of his empty bowl, spoon rattling as it comes to rest on the bed. “I care that if he’s… I care that I can’t _protect_ him like this. If anything happens now, he wasted his juice on me and I still can’t…”

“Okay, has it ever occurred to you that you could, like… say any of this to Cas?” Sam groans. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m really glad you’re actually talking to me instead of throwing a bitch fit and pretending we don’t have feelings about anything, but… you guys keep getting into these blow-ups where you can’t talk to each other, and it really seems like at the heart of it, you’re both complete morons.”

“Gee, thanks, Sam, tell us how you really feel.”

“I mean, he can’t face you because he thinks he failed to protect you. You’re in here hating that you’re not doing more to protect him. And we could spend from now to the next apocalypse going around in circles doing the same things over and over again, or the two of you could be honest with each other.”

“You don’t understand.”

“No, believe me, I understand a whole lot more than you think right now. The veil has been freaking… lifted from my eyes here, Dean, and there’s a lot I can’t get into with you right now, but I get that Cas is important to you. I’m _glad_ Cas is important to you. I would be very happy for the two of you being… important to each other, if you would just… have that conversation. But you never say the stuff you wanna say, and you wind up getting it exactly wrong. I’ve hit my limit, dude, I’ve seen you do this for way too long.”

“Hey, you don’t-- you don’t know a damn thing about it--”

“When Cas comes back in here, I don’t care how much you tell him about your feelings, that’s up to you--”

“I don’t have ‘feelings’ for Cas.” Dean snaps. 

Sam doesn’t even have to turn around to know Cas is there. There’s no universe kind enough for him not to be.

“Son of a bitch.” Dean groans and falls back into his pillows again, smacks the heel of his hand into his forehead a few times. “How could one man be so stupid?”

“I’ll go talk to him. _You_ , you are going to think very carefully about how you want to word the next thing you say to him.”

“I’m never talking to him again. He might be low on angel mojo, but I’m pretty sure he can still kill me with a look.”

“Quit being a baby.”

“Bitch.” He pouts, but there’s not much feeling behind it.

“Jerk.” Sam responds on pure reflex, before heading out after Cas.

He finds him kneeling in the snow, just a few yards out, barely holding himself up on shaking arms.

“Cas!” He jogs forward, scooping him up. He looks pale, pained… it doesn’t take a genius to realize he must have taken off by wing after walking in at the absolute worst moment, didn’t even think about the fact that they wouldn’t carry him. They’ve been broken before, and still not as bad as they are in this world… “Hey-- hey, look… Dean’s an idiot.”

“Dean is not the problem. I can’t ask any more of him. Foolish of me to be so hurt by the truth, it’s not surprising to me.”

“He didn’t mean it like it might have sounded.”

“Sam, please.” Cas pulls away, stumbling a little. “Once, I might have impressed him. I’ve changed. It’s fine, there’s no need to pretend.”

“If you just go in and talk to him--”

“What for? So he can apologize that I found out so bluntly, so he can say that he never intended to let on that he knew about my feelings? And then I’ll lie and say everything is fine, knowing I’ve failed him so spectacularly that that spark of feeling I once thought he might have for me is laughable now?”

“If that’s what he says to you, I’ll kick his ass.”

“Sam, you know that if you attempted to injure him further now, I would be forced to stop you.” Cas sighs, weary. “And then he would have even more reason to be disappointed with me, so let’s just skip that… that whole mess.”

“Dean’s not disappointed with you.”

“Yes. He _is_.” Cas insists, like it’s some unshakeable truth. “He asked me one very simple thing, the simplest, not to change. And here I am. And if I can’t do that for him, and I cannot even heal him properly, if I can’t protect him on an ordinary hunt… what am I?”

“You’re still my best friend.” Sam shrugs.

“Am I? I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Come on, get in the cabin.” He sighs, slinging an arm around Cas-- mentally preparing to pick him up and carry him if he resists, though he’s not sure how far he’ll get if he tries.


	10. Ten Years Gone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This time, Sam doesn't get away with letting too much truth slip out...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took SO long. Between needing to focus on other things and just... getting a lot written that I wasn't happy with, it took a lot of time to feel like I was getting what I wanted.

This time, the highlight reel starts in Stanford. Jess has a friend, a weird and kind of standoffish girl, a little protective-- not the kind of weird and standoffish and protective where Sam thinks she has a thing for Jess herself, but the kind where the two of them just have to agree to coexist and try and want the best for each other, until Dean shows up-- Sam has a whole list of crimes against humanity and against him in particular that Chuck has to answer to, but making him watch Dean hook up with Jess’ friend is the one he would really love to kill God over. She’s not exactly what he’d call hot, not the kind of girl he would have expected Dean to go for, especially back then, but she’s clearly into him, and it’s way more than Sam needs to see, before it mercifully cuts to the next scene.

Or, not mercifully, because they’ve reached Jess’ death, and he’s not ready. It doesn’t matter how many times he rebuilds his life, or what he rebuilds it into, or who with, there’s no being ready for this. Dean holding him fast, dragging him back, the anguish on his face when he realizes he can’t hold them both, when the girl he’d hooked up with, a girl he barely knows, charges in instead, and Sam missed why she was there, how she was there, the Sam in the highlight reel doesn’t even seem to notice when she runs into the fire, but Dean…

Life goes on, mostly in a familiar way, Chuck fast-forwards through a lot that looks familiar. Dean makes a deal, Dean goes to Hell, Dean finds Sam and things go back to normal, except Dean is cagey and upset in a whole new way.

And then Sam’s there, in a motel room like a million others, meeting Cas for the very first time. Not the way he first met him, in the real world, his world. He wakes up and Cas is just _there_ , perched on the edge of Dean’s bed, watching him sleep.

He should act like this is unexpected, he should demand answers, attack, something… but instead he just stares.

“Cas?”

“Sam. Hello.” Cas doesn’t look at him. “You must be surprised to see me here like this.”

“Uhhh… yeah.”

“I thought that I could change it.”

“... Change what?”

He finally turns from his contemplation of Dean, fixing Sam with a sorrowful look. “I thought I could change things, for you. I thought if I could spare you… I thought I could change the dark road you were destined to take. But I failed you. I failed you both. How did you know me?”

“What?” Sam pushes himself up, rubbing at his eyes. Right, first meeting, he probably should have freaked out.

“You recognized me, when you woke and saw me here. You didn’t leap to your brother’s defense, or look at me like a stranger.”

“I… That is a really loaded question, Cas. What do you mean, you failed me?”

“I drove the demon out of your circle of confidants, I thought that would be enough. But he wasn’t the real threat, and Jessica paid the price for my lack of foresight. I… This was before I knew, how big a part of my existence Dean would become. I only knew you were destined to be Lucifer’s vessel and I thought I could stop it. I couldn’t…”

“Wait-- Wait, you were…?”

“Obviously, when I required a vessel to speak to Dean after his resurrection, I wanted to find one closer to him. And… well, I wore out my welcome with my previous emergency host, when I failed to protect her friend, as I had promised.”

“Okay. I got one question and I _really_ don’t want to ask it… Jess’ friend, the, uh… the redheaded girl?”

“Katie. Yes.”

He should have realized, honestly. Why else would the highlight reel have started there, with that change? She had the same eyes, similar nose, could have been from the same bloodline, through a cousin somewhere. She could have been from anywhere, she was just there for school, same as him.

“And the fire--?”

“I was too late. I didn’t mean for her to see…”

“But she was safe?”

“Of course. While I was occupying her, she was safe. It was… still dangerous, potentially, but… no, she was unharmed.”

“For you to have pushed Brady out, you had to be there a while, how did Jess not notice?”

“I debated telling her the truth, but I was worried it might be… too much. I still hoped to keep you free from any… interference. I believe she chalked the differences up to the stress of studies.”

“And… Dean? Was that you?”

Cas turns back to gaze down at him, and Sam figures he didn’t need to ask. There’s a look of tenderness and sorrow that feels too private to be party to, no matter how many times he’s seen something play out between them, or at least, start to.

“I couldn’t help it. I-- I didn’t know, then, that I would be the one to pull his soul from the pit, I didn’t know how our fates were intertwined. I only knew that when I looked at him, he was the best, the brightest thing I had ever seen. Truly Righteous, and I was unprepared to find him. When he looked at me, when he wanted _me_ , flawed as I am, weak, imperfect… When his hand first met mine, I was _powerless_. Sam, when he moved in me--”

“Woah, woah, I do _not_ need that-- I do not need to think about… that!”

“I felt as if I had all the answers, I felt as my Father must have felt at the beginning of all Creation, as if there had only ever been a fathomless darkness and yet now at my fingertips there was a blinding new light. And I _felt_ … No angel was meant to feel the things I felt then. And when he held me in his arms, I was… I became incautious.”

“Does Dean _know_ you were--”

“Yes.” He whispers, and the sorrow in that look about doubles, and he trails his fingertips along Dean’s cheek. “He… I told him, then, that I was an angel, that I was hoping to protect your family from something. But he was… hazy, half-asleep, and we had to part and I don’t know how much had really reached him, whether he wrote it off as crazy after the fact. And then… when I pulled him from Hell, when I rebuilt every piece of him, when I seared myself onto him body and soul… I came back to him in this vessel. It was… a lot to take.”

“Dean freaked out?”

“I don’t know. No-- not… He was… I took him by surprise. When we made love, I appeared to be young and female. I suppose… this vessel is still quite young, when compared to my actual age. But… before, Dean appeared older, and more… male. And I was… not that. Coming back… I understand that this is not an easy change to accept, I am very different. He is under no obligation to hold the same physical desires for this vessel that he did for the previous one. But… I am under no obligation to seek a vessel based on how pleasing it might be to him, when I have discovered I am more comfortable, being a man.”

Sam groans and rubs at his eyes again. “Okay, here’s the thing… my brother is like… a decade away from being ready to have his bi freakout. This is _not_ his strong suit-- stuff like feelings, or thinking about what he actually wants. And we… didn’t grow up with a lot of acceptance. About anything. I mean, our dad disowned me for going to _college_ , I don’t think Dean… Even with the old man gone, you know, he… Right now, he’s still tangled up in what everyone else thinks he should be. And he’s not ready to think about who he is, or who he wants to be.”

“What do you mean?” Cas cocks his head to one side, brow furrowed.

“I mean… give Dean some time. Don’t write him off just because he needs time to wrap his head around you being you.”

“Sam, I am touched that you would have so much consideration for my feelings, when I have just admitted to my failure to save someone you love.”

“Well… you tried. That counts. And… I’ve had time to move forward. I’m never going to forget about her, but… An angel trying to save her, that’s… that’s still something. I mean… I’ve dealt with a lot of loss. It’s… not easy, but you learn to live with it.”

“What year?” Cas asks.

“What?”

“You didn’t know it was me before, but you knew me now. Are you really from a decade into the future?”

“Oh, oh no, uhh-- Not… exactly?” He winces. Well, he’s been spotted before and it was fine, he just didn’t say anything too revealing, and… 

“What you said--” Cas begins, and then, nothing.

When there’s something again, it’s not Chuck’s control room, it’s the bunker. Only it’s… it’s not _his_ bunker.

“Hey, Sam.” Chuck’s voice whispers in his ear. “You don’t want to know what happens if you get three strikes. But as it is, I had to re-set some things. You’re going in blind, buddy.”

“You can’t do that to me!” He hisses.

“Can’t do what to you?” Dean asks, coming around the corner.

“Forget about it, talking to myself.” He says, taking stock of this version of Dean. Not as different as seeing him as a woman, but a pretty big difference. Pink oxford shirt under a vee-neck sweater. Shoes. Like, real shoes, ones that look nice. Granted, anything other than combat boots was going to look a little weird, even Deanna had the combat boots, but these shoes are… like, _almost_ as nice as Dean’s fed shoes, only he’s wearing them around the bunker. “What are you dressed up for?”

“Hm?” He looks down at himself. “Hey, I’m not the one who made the ‘let’s all wear pants in the bunker’ rule. But you know how it is.”

Sam looks down at himself. He’s dressed like a normal person-- like the normal person he was going to be, not like a hunter. It’s just… stunningly _weird_ on Dean, in a way he’d never thought about before. The middle ground between fed suit and grease-or-blood-stained denim and flannel is just… 

Un-Dean.

“What’s up with you?” Dean asks, because apparently in this universe, Sam’s the one who’s being weird and Dean routinely wears clothes that wouldn’t be out of place on the villain in an 80s comedy.

“I don’t know, nothing. Nothing I can talk about.” He snorts.

“Oh, I gotcha, yeah. Hard to get a date when you’re on lockdown because the devil wants to walk around wearing you like a… Sam-suit.” He drops into a chair, grabbing a book off the library table and leafing through it idly. 

“Uh. Yeah. Yeah, it’s… I’m a little stir-crazy, I guess. Um… you?”

“How am I handling being locked up because I’m an apocalypse-level nuke waiting to happen? Same as yesterday, I guess. Sure, it sucks, but… world won’t end. No one gets in, no one gets out, safe. I mean, hey, we always got delivery day to look forward to.”

Sam would love to ask, but there’s no way this version of him needs any clarification on what delivery day is, or anything else. He picks up a book, starts reading, and hopes that if he just waits around long enough, something will give him the clue he needs. Or Cas will show up. Is Cas ‘delivery day’? If he and Dean are stuck in the bunker full-time, maybe he is. Someone would have to make supply runs, after all, and if Dean isn’t any freer than Sam is...

He’s not even thinking about delivery day, when several hours of reading and one nap later there comes a heavy footfall from down the hallway, and he turns to see John Winchester, of all people. Bringing sandwiches.

It’s not the father he knew. That much is clear even before Sam sees him, it’s even in the tread of his feet, he’s… Different, somehow. And, like Dean, he looks out of his element dressed like a normal person. Not as preppy normal as Dean, at least, because Sam’s not sure he could take that, but… suburban dad normal, like… jeans and a Hawaiian shirt and shoes that are ugly, but in a mind-bendingly _normal_ ‘this is what a dad wears’ way, not in a ‘covered with monster viscera’ way.

“Dad?”

“What’s up, kid?” He sets one of the plates down in front of Sam. Dean doesn’t bat an eye at their father bringing them food, so that’s…

That’s sure as fuck a thing.

“Nothing-- nothing, just-- um. Forget it.” Sam shakes his head.

“Sammy’s having an off day.” Dean says, and when he’s gently cuffed upside the head, he laughs like it’s an affectionate in-joke, not a warning to shape the hell up. “Hey, I’m the good son!”

“If you’re the good son, how come _Sam’s_ been doing _your_ work the past few months?”

“Staycation.” He shrugs. “Earned it.”

“Sam can’t write that update I needed from months ago.” John-- Sam can’t even think of this John Winchester as the same man as the father he remembers-- grabs a hefty book from one of the shelves, coming over to toss it onto the table. “Pronto.”

“Looks like you’re back to being the favorite.” Dean rolls his eyes, looking over at Sam like this is just a thing they joke about and not the root of some kind of issue or trauma. Like maybe-- aside from living in the bunker to avoid getting puppeted into an apocalypse-- they’re just some kind of normal family and they get along.

_Weird_.

Apparently there’s a response to that he’s supposed to give, because Dean just looks at him when he doesn’t respond correctly.

“You really are going through it.” He snorts, with a shake of the head, and then he’s flipping through the book. 

Sam leans over to look. It’s an angelarium-- Dean’s turned to Michael’s page to write ‘dick’ in the margins, which is surely not what he’s supposed to be updating the book with.

Although, he’s not wrong…

Sam watches Dean flip through until he hits Cas. The book doesn’t have much on him, at all, but Dean starts filling some in. He gets a good paragraph written and tosses his pen down, leaving the book open to let the page finish drying.

“That’s it?”

“What?”

“That’s… that’s all you have to say about him?”

“He didn’t exactly stop and tell me his life’s story, Sammy. What do you want me to say?”

“I don’t know.” He pulls the book over.

_No indoor voice and no chill, without a vessel. Pulled me (Dean Winchester) out of Hell once, which was cool. Nice guy as angels go but that’s not saying much. No idea what he does when he’s not kicking in doors in Hell and liberating souls. Skills include incinerating demons and giving ‘I’m not mad just disappointed’ lectures to people who make demon deals. Being touched by an angel can leave a scar._

“Seriously, Dean?” He pushes it back towards Dean. 

“What do you want me to write? He pulled me out of Hell, he possessed some holy roller from Illinois for like, two days, and we haven’t exactly kept up a correspondence since I moved into an angel-proof underground bunker.”

“What?”

“What?” Dean gives him a look, but he’s not really talking to Dean.

“That’s cheating, that’s _bullshit_.” Sam yells at the ceiling. “That’s not the rules we agreed on, you asshole--”

And then he’s not in the bunker.

“-- I don’t even get a chance?”

He’s standing outside the remains of a gas station that’s being slowly reclaimed by nature. The Impala’s parked over by the pumps, but if there’s any gas there, it’s no good to anyone, and Dean’s not checking. 

“Sam?” He lopes over, kicking up dust. “Come on, man, keep it together. I can’t deal with you losing it right now. Not on the road.”

“I’ll be fine, I’ll be-- I’m good.” Sam promises, though he glares at a billboard with GOD SAVES spraypainted across its faded and peeling facade. He picks up a rock and chucks it, though he misses the billboard.

“Next settlement’s the Spike and Rail. Hold it together and I promise… If the 99 holds out and we don’t hit any monsters, it’s thirteen more minutes. You can rest when we get there.” Dean looks up at him, brow knit with worry. “I know we’ve been on the road a long time. And if you wanna stop… hell, we’ve been going a long damn time, maybe… maybe there’s no-- maybe we just stop, and stick with the next group of people.”

Sam looks around, really looks. There are rusting broken-down cars here and there, most of them stripped down, some abandoned right in the middle of the highway, some parked around the crumbling ex-gas station. There are arrows spraypainted on the highway, too, labeled with symbols he doesn’t know. An ‘r’ next to one he thinks is pointing north. One pointing off the road entirely labeled with a circle with two arrows through it. A pair of diamonds gouged into a car door, lying near the pumps. Another symbol on the side of the pumps. Despite the distinct lack of anything that doesn’t belong in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, he can smell french fries.

“Apocalypse graffiti?” He kicks at the car-less door.

“Not anything I’ve seen bef--” Dean stops, squints. “Wait. These are… depression era hobo signs.”

“Great. What do they mean?” Sam blows out a sigh. Dean reacted to his mention of the apocalypse like it’s a fact of life, so he can figure out one thing about what a third strike means. He spends the rest of this twenty-four hours living in a world they failed to save.

“How the fuck should I know?” He rolls his eyes. “I don’t-- I read about it once, I don’t remember what they all mean. I know it doesn’t mean a mean dog or a judge or a kind-hearted old lady live here.”

“That leaves a lot of other things.”

“Yeah, no kidding. Who thinks that’s gonna communicate? Some hundred year old hobo living out of one of these cars? You know what, no. I am out of the ‘investigating weird shit’ business, I do not need to know what’s in the hills out there, I don’t-- We’re thirteen minutes from an actual _settlement_ , with _people_.” He huffs, pacing around in a circle. “Mysterious graffiti does not interest me!”

“So why stop?”

Apparently this is a question he should know the answer to, based on the look Dean gives him. 

“It’s what we _do_.” He says, jaw clenched tight and brows drawn. “I don’t believe in a whole hell of a lot nowadays, end of the world’ll do that to a man, but I got this. I got-- I got, I pull over. And I park her by the pumps. And I remember what it used to be. I know it’s not much and I know you think it’s crazy, but it keeps me going, Sam. And I-- I’m sorry, okay? That life’s not better. And maybe we shoulda just stayed with the doc and her family back in their shelter for as long as they’da let us, or at the truck stop camp, even if it wasn’t-- But I don’t know, Sam. It was just… it made my skin crawl and I wasn’t ready to sit still and accept that there wasn’t gonna be something better. Maybe I was wrong.”

“No, Dean, that’s--”

“When we hit Spike and Rail, I won’t go chasing rainbows, okay? I won’t ask what’s further north or if there are any real towns left. I hear they got beds and they got some chickens and sheep… they got walls… they’ve got enough people to keep things running, much as anyone can. If you’re done, then we can be done. This is the last crazy quest and the last empty gas pump.”

“Okay.” He claps a hand down on Dean’s shoulder, reels him in for a quick hug. “Hey… how long have we been on the road, anyway?”

“What, while you were napping or since the last stop, or--”

“Yeah, while I was napping.” He says, because ‘since the world ended’ isn’t exactly a question he can ask, and this gives him an out, lets him pretend things are normal. If this is the third strike, he doesn’t need to know what happens if he fucks it up again.

“Couple hours. You needed it. Didn’t miss much. No abandoned cars on the pass-- nobody who knew the area’d try and take it if they didn’t have the fuel. We drove past a lake, that’s about as exciting as it got.”

“Yeah, okay.” Sam starts, then stops. Reality flickers, off to the side, and he’s not sure for a moment if what he’s seeing is the real or the unreal, but there’s a wide empty lot overgrown with weeds that _isn’t_ , he doesn’t think. “Dean… Dean, I think I see something.”

“Predator or prey?” Dean asks, going on instant alert, knife suddenly in hand. 

“No, nothing like that. I just… I thought I saw something…” Sam picks his way over to where he’d seen it, puts his hand out until it meets resistance, and after a little feeling around in what looks like midair, he gets a door open.

The reality behind that door takes his breath away. Green, everywhere, like an oasis in the middle of so much nothing, birds twittering from their perches in all the plants and bees lazily bumbling between flowers and chickens pecking for bugs along the pathway that winds through it all, and it’s _beautiful_. He’s almost sorry to steal the first glimpse of it from the Sam who’s been fighting through an apocalypse world for who knows how long. Almost.

Except for the part where there are children, too, all of whom scream and scatter at the sight of him and Dean, cries of ‘raiders’ from the older ones and ‘bad men’ from the younger as they make for the other end of the enclosed garden-- and one just in tears, frozen in fear until an older child grabs him and carries him back through another doorway. Indoors, Sam assumes.

“Fuck.” Dean mutters.

“These kids… how’d they find this place?”

“Ten years.” He scrubs a hand over his face, his voice a little weak, a little wet. “And this-- here?”

“I mean, the oldest of those kids couldn’t have set up that kind of warding, which normally, you know, I’d think witches, but what’s a powerful witch want with a bunch of kids? Usually nothing good. And you’d think--”

“I think we don’t belong here.”

“That’s it? Wait, you just want to go?”

“We’re clearly not wanted here. Do I want to poke around traumatizing a bunch of kids? No. We-- we can still make it to Spike and Rail. Because if-- if we were supposed to find this place, then we’d have been here a long time ago. We’d--”

“Hello, Dean.”


End file.
